New Hebrideans,

Victims Of A

Nickel Flop...

From a Noumea correspondent. 1 As migrant workers are forced out of New Caledonia amid the nickel recession which has now been felt since 1971, the New Hebridean ‘‘expatriate” workers emerge as a group whose debut in the industrial world has been rudely disrupted.

Attracted by the wage opportuni ties in the Caledonian nickel boom, 2,000 New Hebrideans were em ployed there in mid-1971, crowded into squalid shanty dwellings. As noted recently by the Caledonian Catholic newspaper Le Semeur, the Hebrideans were exploited as the ‘most unfortunate people in the Iferritory”: without civil rights, very jften they did not even have a sur name and were known simply as "Hebridais.

Though the main exodus has now passed, the paper claims that cur •ently the Hebrideans are leaving Vew Caledonia at the average rate if 22 a month, due to a tightening if their employment terms. Unlike he Wallis islanders, for example, vho have French nationality and nigrate by whole families, the Heb ndeans, who have few women with hem, have no legal identity to pro ect their employment.

A number of them were in regular ;mployment and had begun paying :or land bought on credit terms.

With their jobs terminated and men breed to depart overnight, they for feited three to four years hard work md saving.

As far as economic prospects in he condominium itself are con cerned, French High Commissioner fean-Gabriel Eriau noted during his tfarch visit that Santo appeared to )e the “economic capital” of the slands. (While Vila is the centre for \nglo-Saxon banks and legal offices, Janto is the centre of the French :attle properties.) French observers iccompanying Mr Eriau also pointed )ut that he received a much more fevourable reception in Santo, com >ared with the demonstrations in the administrative capital of Vila.

Tn Santo, Mr Eriau commented on he improved world market price for :opra and in the beef industry said le looked forward to the day when ocal abattoirs of international stan lard would permit the export )f beef not only to New Caledonia )ut further afield.

The French official also discussed

tourist development and said that the; New Hebrides should benefit frorm Japanese tourists when the aiding Paris-Tokyo-Noumea comes intoc operation next year.

On the prices problem, it was i pointed out the current world in flation alone cannot explain the ex cessively steep spiral noted in the; New Hebrides. Mr Eriau therefore: suggested that it was hardly neces sary to obtain all imports from ai country “whose currency is presently' strong”. The remark was passed om by the Noumea press as sound ad vice for Caledonian importers who also buy extensively in Australia.