New Financial

Shot In The Arm For Solomons

From “PlM’s” Honiara Correspondent An announcement that £A 1,250,000 will be made available to the Solomons over the next three years from the

Commonwealth Development

and Welfare Fund has been re ceived with enthusiasm here. rE money is available as from April 1 last, and the Protectorate will also be able to draw on another £450,000 remaining from previous CDW allocations.

The Government has prepared a draft plan of schemes which it wants to finance from the fund and this will be placed before the Legislative Council at its next meeting in De cember.

The draft includes an education plan, a long term aim of which is to provide every child with a full primary education, and also to pro vide for further study for those who warrant it. The education plan is re garded as one of the most important plans ever, but when the White Paper was approved by the Council last February it was not known how the scheme could be financed. It was not known then if CDW Funds would be available after March, 1964.

There has been an improvement in the level of education in recent years, but it has been too slow because of the lack of teachers. Other problems include the fact that one-third of the schools are boarding schools, whose pupils mostly have to grow their own food, and too much time is spent in the food gardens and not enough time behind the desks.

More Money Needed The CDW Funds will not be enough to finance the full education plan, together with the other develop ment plans the Government has in mind, but the allocation is generous and it should ensure the continuation of the rapid development of the Solomons which has taken place in the last couple of years.

Sir David Trench, who leaves for Hong Kong in the next few months, need have no worry about the reputa tion he leaves behind as a man who

gets things done. The BSIP has never had so much aid from the UK as it has been getting recently.

And more aid is expected from a new source—the Freedom from Hunger Campaign. The danger, of course, is that the Protectorate will forget that a little self-help goes a long way, and relax its own internal efforts.

It is up to the Protectorate to speed up development of its own resources of wealth which lie mainly in agri cultural and timber potential. Timber, it has been estimated, could earn £lOO,OOO in direct revenue in 1965.

It could be more than this if secondary industries such as plywood

and fibre board factories were de veloped.

The Solomons is producing more copra and there is a bright future in cocoa, but there is still more labour offering than there are jobs for the unskilled.

Still, the latest news of increased grants is certainly a further step in the right direction. • Another successful Fiji Show was held at Suva on October 11 and 12, and a feature on the first day was the attendance of more than 6,000 school children from Suva and Nausori areas. Increased interest in horse-riding was evident on both days.