People
p. 109 · Read in the full issue
• Fiji-born Mr. Moti Tikaram has icome the first local man to be ipointed a judge. In 1966, he was e first Fiji-born man to become senior magistrate.
Born at Lami in 1925, he was ucated at the Samabula Govern ent School, the Methodist Mission hool at Toorak and the Marist others High School. He went to uckland University and completed s university career at Victoria diversity in Wellington.
Having obtained his Bachelor of iws degree in 1954, he began in ivate practice in Suva. He became magistrate and acted as senior agistrate for several years before ving that appointment confirmed 1966.
His appointment as Fiji’s first :ally-born judge was confirmed on aril 28.
The present prisons ordinance ntains provisions based on recom mdations made by Mr. Justice keram after he conducted a full ale inquiry into the riot in Suva aol in 1963.
Apart from his vigour in legal •cles, he takes an active role in veral of Fiji’s sporting and charit le associations. • Australian Commissioner in Fiji, r. R. N. Birch, visited Tonga to jcuss with government what further 1 can be made to Tonga under the istralian South Pacific Assistance an for the next financial year. He id he was satisfied with the way >nga was using Australian aid which currently valued at $BO,OOO. Next ar ASPAP will provide ifonga with probation officer to deal with senile crime and a telephone plan ag expert. • Mr. Ken Phillips, who headed anzinc Riotinto explorations for •pper on Bougainville. Papua-New uinea, from 1964 to 1966 and has ice made several trips to the terri ry for American concerns looking r further copper deposits, was re ntly appointed general manager for new, diversified, Australia-wide ineral search companv, Minops y. Ltd. Last year Mr. Phillips
worked briefly for Dillingham and Signal Oil (PIM, Aug., 1968, p. 110). • Administrative assistant with the fisheries division of American Samoa’s Agriculture Department, Miss Alofania Vaita, spent a period last year at Hawaii studying latest fishing techniques. A school certif icate graduate from the Western Samoan College, she has worked as an announcer on American Samoa’s swinging radio station WUV, helped prepare the territory’s government newsletter, worked as assistant editor on Apia-based Samoa Times and put in several months in the US doing clerical duties for insurance companies. • Mr. I. A. Wood, Chief of the Division of Mines in Papua-New Guinea, was to retire in June after about 12 years in NG. From 1940 to 1945 he served in the RAAF as a navigator on Catalina flying boats in the New Guinea area.
In 1957 he went to the territory and was appointed to Chief of Division of Mines, Port Moresby. • Mr. K. W. Dyer, District Com misioner of New Guinea’s West New Britain District, was to move to Port Moresby in June to take up a new post as First Assistant Direc tor of the territory’s Department of District Administration. Mr. A. T.
Carey was to be acting DC West New Britain until a permanent ap pointment was made. • Mr. M. P. Wilson and Mr. M.
Takata, both members of United Nations four-man Tuna Mission, were in Tonga recently. Mr. Wilson is a fisheries management biologist from Koror, Western Caroline Islands, and Mr. Takata is director fish and game division, Hawaii. They also visited Fiji, American and Western Samoa, Papua-New Guinea, New Hebrides and New Caledonia.
The UN has set aside $400,000 for Islands, and Mr. Takata is director, a Noumea-based fisheries research project in the Islands. • Mr. Alan Cameron, an officer with New Guinea’s Department of Forests, was seriously injured in a car accident on the Indonesian island of Makassar in April. He was to be flown back to his home at Lismore, NSW, in May. Mr. Cameron was on a five-month tour of Indonesia and the Philippines studying teak timber and collecting kamarare and pine seeds for planting in NG.
• Mr. Horst Rilk, Columbus Line’s executive in Australia, put in a week on Tarawa, capital of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, in mid- May to look into the possibility of increasing the number of calls Columbus makes to the capital.
Columbus Line has a competitor on its Tarawa calls—Japan’s energetic Daiwa Line—and another line, the US Trust Territory’s MILI, is ex pected to call later this year. • Dr. James Hitchcock, division of infectious and tropical diseases.
School of Public Health, University of California, after completing final arrangements with Tonga’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Sione Tapa, left for one of Tonga’s remote northern islands, Niuatoputapu, where he will extend studies begun last year. These studies involve mosquitoes and filariasis on both Niuatoputapu and Tafahi. He will also make a study of the population to establish the incidence of filariasis. • Mr. F. A. Bensted, District Commissioner at Daru, in the Gulf of Papua, retired in April because of ill-health. Mr. Bensted, 56, joined the magisterial service of Papua in 1936 (his father was a resident magistrate there) and has served with distinction in both Papua and New Guinea. • Mr. Richard Badua, a surveyor from the UK’s Directorate of Over seas Survey, who was in Tonga last year for the initial preparation for the aerial photography of the king dom, has arrived for the second stage of the survey. This will comprise field identification of points pre marked for photography and field observations and electronic measure ments of control points identified in the photographs. This will link up all the Tongan Islands. To date the geographic positions of the main islands have been fixed by individual and sporadic astronomical observa tions on various surveying assign ments, but this complete survey will collate the island groups in a single system. The whole project will be completed in a year. ® Mr. Harvey Morrish arrived in Noumea in May to replace local Qantas Manager Erik Kongsted, who is off for three months leave.
Mr. Morrish is amusing Cale donians with the French dialect he learned during his recent 3i years posting on Mauritius.