'Concern' over atomic centre

Mr. Romuald Attain, a member of French Polynesia’s Governing Council, told the South Pacific Conference that the major concern of Polynesia was the existence of the Atomic Experimentation Centre and the “too rapid expansion” of the tourist industry. The conference was in Suva in September.

There was, he said, a “large and brutal” influx of people and capital from outside the territory, and this had led to economic and social problems within it. French Polynesia was artificially over-developed in some sectors. Eventually the activity of the experimentation centre (CEP) would slow down, and this situation had to be faced and steps taken to meet it.

French Polynesia also had a labour problem. Numerous Polynesian workers preferred to work in New Caledonia where they found higher salaries and better social opportunities.

The territory was concentrating its efforts on production in tuna and

lagoon fishing, fish canning, poultry and pig breeding, subsistence crops without soil, citrus plantations and prawn farming, French Polynesia had one of the highest rates of population increase in the world; something had to be done in the field of sex education and family planning. The pollution of drinking water, and pollution generally, needed to be carefully watched, as did the conservation of fauna and flora, the husbanding of ocean resources and the exploitation of lagoons.

Mr. Allain did not say by what means the drinking water would be polluted. See p. 18 for a full SPC conference report.