Population Problem
p. 10 · Read in the full issue
Advisory Council Inaugurated
Family Planning Urged
To Cope With Geic
Population Problem
People in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony will have to plan their families if they want to ensure that succeeding generations are not re duced to a miserable subsistence level.
HTHE GEIC Resident Commissioner, Mr. V. J. Ander . sen > said this in Tarawa on September 30 at the inaugural session of the colony’s recently-established Ad visory Council.
Mr. Andersen said the colony’s growing population was a major problem.
Preliminary figures for the census taken in April showed a gross figure of nearly 50,000 compared with 36,000 only 16 years ago.
As some 600 people had emigrated to the BSIP during this period and most of the existing popu lation was in the lower age groups, an even more alarm ing increase could be expected in the future unless family planning was practised.
Mr. Andersen said other problems facing the Colony were: • The limited extent, mal-distribution, and poor quality of the land. • Geography—the islands being scattered over two million square miles of the remotest part of the Pacific, with some of the islands subject to severe drought, lack ing safe natural harbours, and without fresh-water rivers or streams. • Lack of economic resources. (The phosphate at Ocean Island will be exhausted in 15 to 25 years’ time, and, so far as is known, land in the Colony is capable of growing only coconuts economically.) ® Lack of revenue and employment opportunities when phopsphate production ceases. (The export of phosphate brings in about half the Government’s re
venue and Ocean Island provides em ployment for about one-third of the Colony’s labour force. Nauru, which will probably cease production about five to 10 years after Ocean Island, provides another third of the present employment opportunities). • The need for improvements to social and other services. In general government services are not yet fully adequate.
Mr. Andersen said that even if the hard facts of geography could not be altered, many of the other difficul ties could be reduced, if not elimin ated, by proper planning, judi cious use of revenues, hard work, en listing the wholehearted support of the people of the Colony, and by the continuation of overseas assistance, particularly from the UK.
Vice-Regal Visitor
Lord Howe Island’s rugged scenery provided an attractive backdrop for Clive Wilson when he took the above pictures of Australia's Governor-General, Lord de L’Isle, having a “look-see” round the island during his recent visit in HMAS “Sydney”. Lord de L’Isle is in the foreground in the second of the two photos. Below he is seen addressing the people of Nor folk Island from the platform of the Administration building at Kingston during his earlier Norfolk Island visit on the same voyage. — Photo: M. Hoare.