Fiji's Unbalanced

Suva—Or

The Bush

Fiji's Unbalanced Labour Situation

The wheel must have turned full circle when Australia —a traditional “white labour” country—is held up as an example of how to compete on world markets with natives and Asiatics. Yet this happened in Fiji recently.

THE credit squeeze which effectu ally killed the mushroom build ing boom in and about Suva has resulted in considerable unemploy ment.

Most of the unemployed were over night “carpenters”—former labourers who became “tradesmen” by merely sticking a hammer in their belt and borrowing a saw. This class of un employed was augmented by genuine tradesmen put off by the Public Works Department because of short age of work.

Yet at the same time Mr. J. P.

Bayly, Fiji’s largest individual land owner, complains that he could not work all his rubber estates because of shortage of labour.

He said there had been recent reference to Fiji’s derelict rubber plantations. He controlled the three

largest rubber estates in Fiji and they were far from derelict.

On Yarawi plantation, during the last four-weekly period, he tapped 4,000 lbs of sheet rubber. Mavua, the largest, was in excellent condi tion and so was Waidoi. Some of the trees had died along the road side because the PWD had blocked

the old plantation drains when they put the roads through, but the re mainder of the trees were healthy.

Mr. Bayly said he would work Mavua and Waidoi if labour were available, but it was not.

This paradoxical situation regard ing labour —unemployment in Suva and a labour shortage in the country

-is plainly due to the fact that rorkers, their wives and families, mg used to town life, will not go ito the country. It is a common mdency in most countries.

Houses are very hard to obtain in le country. There is practically o such thing as an empty house in >untry districts, except derelict lanties.

Even if labour quarters were avail ble on rubber plantations, school ig has to be considered along with aily bus fares to some fairly istant school.

In any case, people simply do not ant to go into the country.

It is a development problem, as mtended by Mr. Bayly when he lys that high inducements have to 3 offered by Indian cane growers > get labour to cut cane.

He also cites the fact that each lorning lorry loads of Indians go om Nausori to Suva to work. He iso said that the main cause of le Nausori mill closing was short je of labour, and that the same actor was an important con ibutory cause for shutting down le pineapple cannery at Lautoka. • In this connection he com pared Fiji with Queensland, where 2,500 white growers with 7J>OO acres of land, in 1956, contributed more than £ 3,000,000 in canned pineapples to Australian exports.

These exports, grown by white labour, competed successfully on the world's markets.

Mi*. Bayly said that there were )w 150,000 Fijians, many living on low subsistence level, and added lat Sir Jeffrey Clay, agricultural :pert from the Colonial Office, told m that the low individual produc an of the Fijian was a matter of mcern.

Mr. Bayly replied: “Would you id I produce if a baron could take from us?”

Sir Jeffrey replied at once: “You ean the communal system?”

“The Fijian,” says Mr. Bayly, luffers from a kind of malaise used by the dead hand of the mmunal system; so being the alist that he is, he bails up.

“The economic system of the 3lony demands that the communal stem over the Fijians be abolished ith as little delay as possible, and tat the Fijians be allowed freedom enter into business which now almost exclusively run by Euro sans and Indians.”

The French sloop Francis Gamier sited Wallis and Futuna Islands in igust and was due in Apia Western imoa, on September 6.

Laurie Graham, of Lautoka, won ie Vatukoula open golf champion lip recently, to add it to an already ipressive championship list for the 58 season. He had previously taken it the Fiji, Ba and Lautoka Golf lub titles.