Back to Middle Ages for Vila’s meat production

Vila’s meat production

From a Vila correspondent

The New Hebrides Abattoir, in Vila, has closed down. It went under after just seven weeks of a three-month trial period under the supervision of a French-oriented pastoral producers’ co-operative.

In the earlier stages of its two year history, the abattoir, developed and managed by Australian interests and with many local shareholders, had built up an excellent reputation for supplying quality-cut meat to retailers. It had also carried out suc cessful experiments with the pro duction of smoked and corned pro ducts.

It now remains to be seen whether the old management, despite the loss of experienced staff, can pick up the pieces and recapture the abattoir’s former reputation for hygiene and efficiency.

It is not so long ago that visitors to Vila, touring shopping areas, were greeted with the ghastly medieval sight of locals hacking into bloody carcasses in open, fly-encrusted doorways. Following the collapse of the abattoir, one American resident has already reported the return of this type of spectacle. He has elected to stay vegetarian until the abattoir gets back into production.

In the meantime the con dominium’s three-cultured bureaucratic machinery still vacillates in reviewing urgently needed clean meat laws.

Abattoir manager Graham Daniels and his local shareholder supporters are wading through the quagmire in the new battle against power politics and the lethargy of producer cartels in a crusade for modern meat inspection standards and export quality safeguards.

Local beef producers, asking unrealistic prices for cattle, are making the audacious claim that the middleman abattoir should be made to process exports free of charge, disregarding altogether the cost ol plant and experienced labour to process the meat in accordance with world export standards.

It is hard to reconcile the isola tionist, “blow-you-Jack” attitude of some influential beef producers with

the fact that the New Hebrides is witnessing a winding-down of Bri tish-French government and that the new condominium budget needs the financial backing of local resources.

Neighbouring countries are beg ging for meat imports. The abattoir has capabilities yet untried in the food market.

It is a shame that shareholders with faith must first labour to remove needless overburden.

The situation is perhaps best sum med up in the fact that a proposed contract for $A200,000 worth of meat for Martinique, to be carried in French Pacific shipping returning to France from the New Hebrides, is still bogged down in condominium paperwork.

Fiji tourist firm

makes a profit

The Tourist Corporation of Fiji Ltd moved into the black in the first six months of the current financial year to November 30, 1976.

Revenue in the half-year was up by 32.26% to $1.5 million. The higher revenue, allied with tight control on overheads, was a major factor in the good result.

The company continued to trade profitably in December and Janu ary. Provided the fall-off in hotel occupancy in the traditional “off’ months, February to April, is not too serious, the company will pro duce its first profit at the end of the financial year, May 31.

New resort for

Tonga next year

Tongatapu, Tonga’s main island, will have a new hotel resort next year.

The complex, to cost $1,200,000, is to be built by Pacific Inns of Tonga Ltd, at Fahina Beach on the island’s west coast near the famous blowholes.

There will be, initially, 60 international-standard bedrooms, a restaurant, coffee-shop, swimming pool, entertainments centre, bars and a health centre spread over 2Vi acres.

The centre will be on lease to Beverly

Evans, a well-known Sydney beauty consultant.

Building is expected to start towards the end of May with completion 12 months later.

Local resident directors are the Tongan noble Hahano Vaha’i and Mr Peter Warner.

PNG wants loan

for Highlands road

The Asian Development Bank, which has already put nearly SA3S million into Papua New Guinea development loans, may increase this amount. Representatives of the bank and the PNG Government were to hold talks in Port Moresby.

PNG is interested in obtaining further loan money to improve the Highlands Highway, more than 400 kilometres of unsealed road, which crosses two major mountain ranges to link the port of Lae with Mount Hagen.

More Tourists

in French Polynesia

Tourist traffic to French Polynesia grew to 91,993 visitors in 1976, compared with 82,822 in 1975. This 11 per cent increase was due to more tourists coming from Australia and South America, as well as from the USA, Germany, Mexico and Japan.

Traffic dropped from Canada, Italy and England with slightly fewer French as well.

While this year’s tourist statistics can be expected to show the effect of Qantas cutting out its Sydney-Papeete service and Air France abandoning the Tokyo-Papeete-Lima route, extra traffic is arriving from the cold-smitten

Usa.

‘No’ to Palau

superport

The Tia Beluad movement of Palau has taken a strong stand against the proposed superport for Palau District.

After two years’ study of the project, the movement its name means “This is our nation” says: “The short-term monetary benefits that the superport will bring are not worth the price that the people of Palau will have to pay in terms of the loss of culture and the destruction of land and sea.”

The movement announced its stand following its first national convention in Ngerkebesang, Koror District, in January.