People

• Incorruptible—that’s what he is.

So Josefata Kamikamica has been given the job of managing Fiji’s Native Land Trust Board. Mr Kamikamica, at 38 and a senior civil servant was asked if he’d like the $8,400 a year job after 31 ap plicants—only three of them local— had been rejected as unsuitable. Ex plained Minister for Fijian Affairs and chairman of the NLTB Ratu William Toganivalu: “We feel the manager must be absolutely in corruptible. I am not insinuating that previous managers have been corrupt.

But the fact is that in this position there is scope for corruption and that is why the manager must be incorruptible.” Mr Kamikamica obtained his Bachelor of Commerce degree at Melbourne University in 1959 and spent a year on research at the Australian National University in Canberra. • Professor R. F. Watters, As sociate Professor in Geography at Wellington’s Victoria University has just returned to New Zealand after a year on Abemama Island in the Gilbert group. Professor Watters has been co-ordinating a research project in economic development and social response in the GEIC. Five economists and anthropologists are involved in the project—four in the Gilberts, one in the Ellice Islands. They are study ing trends in land tenure, population, products and incomes, family sizes, employment patterns and motivation and decision-making in island society.

The study will continue until next year. • For nine years, Fiji’s Sportsman of the Year Patrick Low was forced to wear a bandage on his osteomyeli tis-affected left leg. Now he’s hoping that a recent operation at Wellington Hospital will put an end to his pain and enable him to get back to some serious table tennis training, a sport in which he won gold and bronze medals in the 1971 South Pacific Games. Patrick expected to spend most of January as an out patient in New Zealand before return lrig to his job as a trainee personnel otficer in Suva.

• Western Samoa’s new author, Albert Wendt, whose book, Sons for the Return Home, is expected out in March or April, was in Sydney in January along with Director of Economic Development Mr Hans Kruse taking a look at the latest film being made for Samoa by Juniper Films. Albert, who is now working on a collection of short stories with a Samoan background, which he hopes Longman Paul will publish, is work ing with the script writers on the new film which is all about his country’s first decade of indepen dence. As well as being a novelist, Albert is a poet of note. His poems have appeared in anthologies pub lished all over the world. Juniper Films made Samoa’s prize film, The Best Kept Secret. • A 1 Harrington, who was born Ta’a Tulafono in American Samoa about 33 years ago, has made good in show business in the United States and Hawaii. A 1 (or Ta’a) was adopted by his step-father when he was three, grew up in Honolulu, won an athletics scholarship to Stanford University where he became a star football fullback. In 1959 he gave football away and became a mis sionary, back in Hawaii. However, a fair bit of water has run into the Ala Wai boat harbour since then.

This year he has a regular part in the Hawaii Five-O TV crime series and his own singing show at one of the big Honolulu hotels. e Air India’s new Fiji manager is what used to be called well-connected and at one time might have been a maharajah himself. But as Mr Chhatapal Sinh, he arrived in Suva in January with his wife and two children to take over from Mr Madan Tail. He comes from Jam Nagar and is a keen sportsman. He visited Fiji in 1964 as a member of Air India’s cricket team and at university cap tained his college’s tennis and hockey teams. His two uncles, Duleepsinji and Ranji rank among the Bradmans and the Jardines in the annals of cricket but another famous relative was the late General Rajendra Singh, once commander-in-chief of the Indian army. • Mr G. F. D. Betham, Secretary- General of the South Pacific Com mission, was expected to make his first visits to Micronesia in January.

He will visit the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony and the US Trust Territory. • Mr Sadaraka M. Sadaraka, cur rently Secretary of the Premier’s Department in the Cook Islands, has

been appointed Secretary for External Affairs for the Republic of Nauru, Central Pacific. He took up his ap pointment on January 21. The post is newly-created, having been pre viously incorporated into the duties of Nauru’s Chief Secretary.

Mr Sadaraka holds a Master of Arts degree from Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand and a Diploma of Public Administration from the same university. He has held his present position as Secretary of the Premier’s Department in the Cook Islands since 1969. • Mr A. P. van Gelderen, who will be remembered by many of the older residents of Fiji, has just started his third career after two retirements.

He went to Fiji in 1914 for six months, and stayed for 41 years, working for the CSR Co Ltd. From 1944 to 1956 he was the company’s chief accountant at Lautoka. He retired in 1956, and with his wife went to Australia to live. He became tired of doing nothing so took a post as assistant accountant with a Sydney engineering firm. Two and a half years later he joined Demka Pty Ltd, for whom he worked for 13 years, the last six as a director. He retired again in September, 1972, but after a short holiday decided that at 76 he was too young to retire. Mr van Gelderen then took up a position as office manager/accountant with a Sydney real estate firm, and says he intends to work for another five to 10 years.

Author Albert Wendt