Nutshell
pp. 35-37 · Read in the full issue
In a Nutshell
National Party For New
HEBRIDES.—The New Hebrides National Party, said by its president, Mr, Aiden Garae, to be an embryo political party, has been established in the New Hebrides. It has develop ed out of the New Hebrides Culture Association, and one of its main objects is to counter the New Hebridean Na-Griamel movement.
Png Election Dates.—The
PNG Government announced in November that polling in the next PNG general elections would begin on February 19 and last until March 11. The commencement date was a week later than announced earlier, to enable the electoral office sufficient time to print as many ballot papers as possible with photos of the candidates. Nominations for the elections close on December 29.
New Role For Asopa.—The
Australian School of Pacific Admin istration, which has been training patrol officers and schoolteachers for New Guinea since 1946, is soon to become a training institution for New Guineans and for people from other South Pacific countries. It aims to have 300 New Guineans enrolled by 1973, with the object of accelerating localisation within the PNG public service.
DEAD CREMATED.—The bones of some 1,000 Japanese war dead recovered on Saipan, Micronesia, were cremated at a ceremony in November in the shadow of Suicide Cliff on Saipan, where thousands of Japanese jumped to their deaths rather than be captured by Ameri can troops. Japanese Government officials and members of the Japan ese Pacific War Bereaved Families Association took part in the ceremony.
Tt Population.—As Of June
30, total population of the Trust Territory of Micronesia was 107,054.
Districts in order of population size were Truk 29,334, Marshalls 23,166, Ponape 21,423, Marianas 13,076, Palau— 12,686, Yap 7,369. Ponape is the most populated island in the TT, with 15,199 people.
Independent Broadcast
ING.—It was announced in Port
Moresby in November that the Aus tralian Government had decided that a single broadcasting authority should be established in PNG before independence, probably under strict government control. PNG broad casting responsibility is at present shared by the Australian Broad casting Commission and the Admin istration, with separate transmitters and organisations. The new single organisation will probably be called the Papua New Guinea Broadcasting Authority.
Png’S Drink Bill. Papua
New Guinea spent almost S2B mil lion on liquor in the year 1970/71, $lB million of it on beer, PNG’s Commission of Inquiry into Drink was told in Port Moresby in Nov ember. About 13 per cent, of per sonal spending in PNG was on alcohol, and the government raised $10.87 million in revenue from alcohol during that year. The brewing industry with its associated industries was economically significant to PNG because it was fairly heavily labour intensive.
Mataungan Acquitted
A New Britain Mataungan Associa tion councillor, Joseph ToGi gi e , alleged to have told village people that they must “work sorcery” and kill a plantation manager if they did not get plantation land, was acquitted in a Rabaul court in November of a charge of having been concerned in an act of sorcery. The previous month, ToGigie was one of seven Tolai men discharged on charges of having murdered East New Britain District Commissioner E. J. Emanuel.
Fourteen others have been sent for trial.
A Look At Samoa.—A Us
Congressional sub-committee will fly to American Samoa in early Dec ember for hearings on legislation to provide for an elected governor for the territory, and also to investigate complaints about conditions under Governor Haydon. The committee later goes on to Micronesia.
Papuans Appeal. “Should
West New Guinea remain incor porated with Indonesia forever, the Papuans run the risk that within a period of 25 to 30 years, the Papuan
people will be completely annihilated by the Indonesians with the help of a number of West European and American businessmen.”
The National Liberation Council of West Papua-New Guinea makes this accusation in an appeal for help to the Second Episcopal Synod meeting at the Vatican. The appeal, which comes from the council’s head quarters at Delft in Holland, asks the synod and Pope Paul “to pay sufficient attention to the fate and the future of the children of Christ living in West Papua-New Guinea and to lend a helping hand to the Papuans of both East and West New Guinea in their attempts at uniting the whole island of New Guinea.”
Signatures on the appeal are those of Nicholas Jouwe “Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Government of the People of West Papua-New Guinea”, and Bernard M. R. Tang gahma, “Minister Plenipotentiary, Special Representative for the Holy See”.
CONGRESS SITE. —A joint com mittee of the Congress of Micronesia will submit its report on a permanent site for the Congress when the second regular session begins on January 10, in Palau. The committee studied sites in Palau, Ponape, Yap and Truk, but not in the Marshalls because of limited land there. The January ses sion will have before it 208 bills and almost 100 joint resolutions and resolutions, but will also spend a lot of time debating future political status.
Wage Rises For Cooks.—
Minimum wage rates for adult male workers in the Cook Islands rose on November 1 from 27i cents an hour to 32 cents. Permanent civil servants get a 10 per cent, increase, retrospective to July 1, and gov ernment wage workers another 3 cents an hour from July 1 and an ad ditional 2 cents from November 1.
For Christmas. The New
Hebrides Condominium released four new stamps on November 23 two in English and two in French for their Christmas stamp series. They feature reproductions of famous “Adoration of the Shepherds” paint ings by Louis Le Nain and Jacopo Tintoretto. The first-day cover design shows the Interconfessional Church in the mining township of Forari on Efate Island. Forari has been built by the Companie Francaise des Phosphates de VOceanie, which is mining manganese.
MORE MOON MEN.—The people of American Samoa will get another chance to see a team of astronauts
returning from the moon. The Apollo 16 team, due for blast-off from Cape Kennedy on March 17 next year, is expected to splash down off American Samoa on March 29. Three recoveries have been made in the area including Apollo 13 which returned to earth with mission aborted after an ex plosion had damaged the spacecraft.
Majuro Hotel Opened.
The Eastern Gateway Hotel, Majuro, in the Marshall Islands, was officially opened on November 8. It’s locally owned, and general manager is Mike Nolan. The Eastern Gateway has 16 units and 16 more are to be built.
Tears For Tongans.—Tears
flowed at Wellington (NZ) railway station on November 14 when 200 Hutt Valley people bade farewell to 61 Tongan men, who have been working in the Hutt Valley for the last six months under a scheme to alleviate the valley’s manpower shortage. The men have returned to Tonga with between S7OO and SBOO each and left behind a community eagerly looking forward to the next batch due late in January or early February. “A tremendous success, a credit to their country and terrific workers,” was the tribute paid to them by Mr. E. C. D. Watson, chair man of the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce.
Youths’ Clean-Up. More
than 200 youngsters in American Samoa were on the government pay roll recently, working for the US Youth Conservation Corp pro gramme which involved clearing beach parks, cleaning up villages and building recreation areas. Four of the nine projects were on Tutuila, one on Aunuu and four in the Manua chain. The bill for the operation came to $48,000, most of which went to the youngsters, who spent their wages mainly on clothing and school supplies. Later, a number of palm trees, which the youngsters had planted on Tutuila’s south shore near the village of Nuu’uli, were destroyed by vandals.
Family Planning.—Fiji’S
family planning campaign has saved the country s4i million which would have had to be spent on providing an additional 1,000 teachers, 1,000 class rooms and 1,000 teachers’ quarters if the campaign had not cut the birth rate by about 34,000. It is estimated that by 1975 the number of children at school will be about the same as now.
ISLAND FIRES.—A mother and five of her children were burned to
death when fire destroyed their bure home at Legalega village, near Nadi Airport, Fiji on November 6. She was Mrs. Sulochana Devi, wife of Mr. Munsami, who was at a cinema when the fire was discovered at 10.30 p.m. The bure was built of oil drums with a thatched roof.
About 130 people holidaying on New Caledonia’s Isle of Pines had their stay cut short when fire burnt out the restaurant complex and dam aged bedrooms at the resort at the beginning of November. The only casualty was an Australian whose foot was injured.
At Mt. Hagen, New Guinea, three large shops and several flats were burned out when fire raced through the commercial section of the town in November. Two people were injured and damage was estimated at $250,000.
“Outsiders” In Tt.—The Trust
Territory of Micronesia currently has 1,680 expatriate workers, the majority of them coming from Okinawa (658) and the Philippines (577). Japan proper and the US each have 88 citizens working in the TT, Korea has 67, Nationalist China 45 and there are 22 British nationals.
OLD FOSSIL.—An almost com plete skeleton of a species of giant
horned turtle, extinct for at least 40,000 years, has been found on Lord Howe Island. The fossilised remains, discovered during excavation work for a swimming pool for a guest house, were sent to Sydney where the Curator of Palaeontology at the Australian Museum, Dr. A. Ritchie, took charge. He described it as the finest yet discovered of an ancient and mystifying reptile.
PETITION MISLAID.—A petition from Lautoka (Fiji) residents pro testing against the establishment of a brewery in the town was not seen by the Minister for Commerce, Industry and Co-operatives Mr. Vijay R. Singh, until after the decision making and planning stages. It had been mislaid in the government offices. Told that the government was allowing the introduction of the brewery to break a monopoly, the Methodist Church, through the Rev.
P. K. Davis, its director of the Christian citizenship and social service department, argued that the increased consumption of liquor was more undesirable than a monopoly.
Exclusive Schools. The
Mariana District Education Depart ment has closed its schools in Saipan to students from other districts in the Trust Territory because of a shortage of school facilities. Places will now be reserved for children whose parents live in the Marianas.
Bsip Resort Planned.
Owner of an artifacts shop in Lae where he has lived since 1960, Canadian bachelor Morris Young plans to build a tourist resort in the Solomons. He told PIM he was about to close a deal with the owners of 30 acres of land at Munda on the south-west coast of New Georgia for a 99-year lease to build a resort area of 26 suites, 32 single units and three luxury suites. The resort, complete with swimming pool and other mod. cons, would cost him and two Lae businessmen partners about $250,000.
Two native representatives of the landowners would be directors.
Lucky Thirteenth. The
13 th round of his 15-round bout with Marika Naivalu, of Fiji, in Suva Town Hall on November 22, was a lucky round for Mani Vaka, Tonga’s heavyweight boxing champion. He stopped Marika in that round and took from him the South Seas cham pionship. Vaka, the first Tongan to hold the championship since Tom Hini won it in 1957, sent Marika to his knees at the end of the 13th round and at the beginning of the 14th round Marika’s seconds threw in the towel.
Flourishing Farmer.
Starting in 1967 with 10 head of cattle, Stephen Orere, aged 36 and the first indigenous cattle farmer in PNG’s Northern District to establish his farm with a Development Bank loan, now has 42 head on his 240acre block of land about six miles from Popondetta. He borrowed more than $l,OOO from the bank and hopes to pay off the loan this year.
Marists Moving The
Roman Catholic order, the Society of Mary (Marists) has moved its South Pacific province headquarters to Suva after 130 years in Sydney.
Its new Provincial, Father F. Lambert, who has been working in the New Hebrides, left for Suva at the end of October to establish the new admin istration centre. Father Lambert’s territory covers Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, the Solomons, Bougainville, New Caledonia and the New Hebrides.
No Kolonia Trouble.—Bars
in Kolonia, Ponape District Centre in the US Trust Territory, may be allowed to open again soon, under tough regulations. The bars were ordered closed in September follow ing a fatal shooting of a Ponape policeman, and only bulk liquor sales have been allowed. Beer con sumption is down 60 per cent, and the number of arrests has been greatly reduced in Kolonia.
Forever Amber.—Now The
Cook Islanders know why their oranges don’t sell well in New Zealand. They’re the wrong colour, Mr. H. R. Lapwood, leader of an eight-man parliamentary delegation from New Zealand in Rarotonga for four days in October, toured citrus plantations and then told the islanders, “Your oranges stay green, even when ripe, but New Zealand housewives expect oranges to be yellow and won’t accept anything else’’. The islanders think it’s a deucedly bad show.
Ships Collide In Vila.—Two
ships, the Amsterdam-registered Wol tersum and the Banks Line’s North bank, were badly damaged when they collided in Vila Harbour on the night of November 19. The Northbank was entering the harbour when the Dutch ship, which was at anchor, swung on her moorings into the Northbank’s path. Five crewmen in the Woltersum dashed out of a port side cabin only seconds before the Northbank’s bow crashed through it.
The Northbank was holed in the bow and the Woltersum was badly damaged on the port side.