Footnotes

Sir Hubert Murray used to say that one of the compensations of life in Papua was that we never had flies and mosquitoes at the same time. If the mosquitoes were bad there were no flies, and vice versa.

Some Niuginians are now saying that you don’t get mosquitoes and bed-bugs at the same time, and most of them appear to think that of the two, mosquitoes are the lesser evil.

Complaints about the Administra tion’s DDT spraying programme to eradicate malaria have been slowly gathering in volume over a period of several years.

At first the main complaint was that the DDT had a deleterious effect on the thatch and palm-leaf walling of village houses. Latterly it has been that the eradication of mosquitoes paves the way for rats and bed-bugs in plague proportions.

The rat plague obviously stems from the fact that dogs and cats die in large numbers after eating smaller animals and insects which have been killed by the DDT.

The connection between mos quitoes and bed-bugs is less obvious, but the tendency of the experts to say that (because they can’t explain it) it can’t be true, has not been well received by Niuginians. It is said that in some villages people no longer sleep in their houses but leave them to the rats and bugs while they sleep on the ground outside.

Officials of the Department of Public Health, pontificating from their unsprayed, wire-meshed, high covenant homes, are unsympathetic.

They deny that DDT has a deleterious effect on native building materials, and if it is to be a choice between mosquitoes and bugs they prefer bugs—for other people at any rate.

They have some good solid statistics behind them too, statistics about the number of people whose deaths are caused by malaria-carry ing mosquitoes. What the statistics don’t show is how many people who live in rat and bug infested houses get up in the morning wishing they were dead.

Europeans who have been getting around in shoes all their lives don’t realise the inconvenience which may be caused by a rat in the bedroom.

Niuginians who get around barefoot soon develop a layer of hard

insensitive skin on the soles of their feet. A rat can nibble away un disturbed at this until he reaches the soft, sensitive flesh and wakes the victim. Next day yet another villager can be observed hobbling around on tender feet.

PHD’s attitude may be sound enough scientifically, but does seem to be rather dictatorial, paternalistic, daddy-knows-what’s-best-for-you stuff for 1970. Perhaps it’s time the PHD men got off their high horse and sat down with village folk to discuss this problem. If they take a few bed-bugs home in their pants so much the better.

Anyway, it seems a bit odd to find our local experts defending DDT so stoutly when all round the world a BIG question mark is being written against its use.

IN the old days, when the ABC gave us a “native people’s session” sandwiched into a predominantly European-slanted programme, it broadcast in a number of vernacular languages. Nowadays it leaves the vernaculars to the Administration radio stations and concentrates on English, Pidgin and Police Motu.

But recently it made one of its rare exceptions to the three language policy. When there were fears that a cyclone might hit some of the island groups which lie off the eastern tip of Papua’s mainland, a cyclone warning was broadcast first in English, then in Police Motu, and finally in a local vernacular. Very sensible too.

The Administration seems to be still hell bent on protecting its propaganda network from the com petition of commercial or other in dependent broadcasting stations, but the going is getting increasingly up hill. The recently formed Christian Communications Commission brings all the churches, Catholic and Protestant, into a united effort in the field of communication, and so robs the Administration of its long-stand ing argument that if it gave a franchise to one church it would

have to give comparable facilities to all the others.

And now rumours are rife that the Administration will not be strong enough to resist pressures being exerted by CRA, and that a television station will be established in Bougain ville to entertain the Copper Giant’s expatriate workforce with cowboys, concupiscence and crime. If this happens, Administration will find it increasingly difficult _to resist the pressure for commercial radio in the rest of Niugini.

QUESTIONS asked during the March meeting of the House of Assembly indicate that liberal-minded members of the legislature are deeply concerned about the transformation of the Administrative College into the Public Service Training Centre.

Gone are the days when John Gunther hoped to incorporate the Administrative College into the uni versity. Gone too is the college’s highly regarded and liberal minded former principal, David Chenoweth, who has been quietly eased out into a rather vague sort of job With the Public Service Board.

Gone also is the college’s Interim Council. It is being replaced by what is described as an “Advisory Group”, from which former council members, Dr. Gunther and Professor Parker, have been excluded. The only bright spot in an otherwise grim outlook is the inclusion in this group of the P-NG University’s Professor of Political Science, Charles Rowley.

The Public Service Board’s chair man, Mr. Unkles, indignantly denies that the students, or “course mem bers” as they are now to be designated, are being bludgeoned into conformity, but in the wake of his deplorable reaction to a very mild student protest a short while ago, his denials carry little weight.

Assistant Administrator, Les John son, on the point of resigning from the Public Service but loyal to the last, made a similar denial in answer ing a heavily loaded question from Pangu Party’s parliamentary leader Michael Somare. But it was noticed that while he denied the bludgeoning he did not explicitly deny that the staff member alleged to be wielding the bludgeon is a Rhodesian ex-cop.

Altogether the set up does not inspire confidence or optimism among those who had hoped that the late lamented Administrative College would develop into a centre of liberal learning. —Percy Chatterton in

Port Moresby