People

Michael Powles has been

appointed New Zealand’s High

Commissioner to Fiji and Kiribati. He will be based in Suva. Mr Powles succeeds David McDowell.

Tosiwo Nakayama, President of the Federated States of Micronesia, in May submitted to the FSM Congress the nomi nation of Edward C. King, of Takoma Park, Maryland, for the position of Chief Justice of the FSM Supreme Court.

Mr King served for four years as deputy director of the Micronesian Legal Services Corporation. Said President

Nakayama: ‘He is thoroughly

familiar with the legal prob lems of our country and our people, and he gained that knowledge as counsel to nu merous Micronesian individ uals and groups. I am confident, therefore, that Mr

King can provide the judiciary

with a perspective that will be welcomed by those who appear

before it seeking justice.’

The University of the South Pacific’s Laucala Campus was visited in May by Isabel Allende, daughter of the for mer President of Chile Sal vador Allende, assassinated in 1973 in the coup which in stalled the military junta of General Augusto Pinochet.

Ms Allende was invited to address a lunchtime forum by the USP Students’ Association, which was among the main forces of protest against Gen eral Pinochet’s visit to Fiji

(PIM Jun p 25).

Ms Allende stressed that the problem of Chile today was not simply that of deposing one man, but of ending an entire system which favoured a small

minority, leaving millions in

‘extreme poverty conditions’, to quote the description used in an official statement of Chile’s Catholic Church.

Mrs Soonu Kochar High Com missioner for India in Fiji, has just completed a wide tour of the South Pacific in which she presented her credentials for recognition as ambassador or high commissioner in a num ber of countries. She visited Papua New Guinea, Nauru, Solomon Islands, Tonga, New Hebrides, Society Islands, Kiribati, Tuvalu and Marshall Islands, and attended recep tions held in her honour.

A Western Samoan registered nurse Ana Nee Nee, has won the International Nurse of the Year Award, given each year under the auspices of the Inter national Council of Nurses.

The award consists of a tro phy, a stethoscope, and $2OO donated by the Australian branch of the US company, 3M

Corporation.

According to Faamanatu Osasa, of Western Samoa’s Nurses’ Association, there were 175 entries from throughout the world for the competition.

Ana was Western Samoa’s choice. It was the country’s third entry since the Nurses’

Association affiliated with the ICN in 1977. ‘This time we were lucky,’ Faamanatu said.

Ana was educated at Papauta and became registered in 1957. Since then she has been involved in general and maternity nursing. She has also served in the districts.

She is at present working in the Filariasis Campaign.

Meralyn Tito is the first female student to take up the study of surveying in Papua New Guinea. Meralyn, who is in her first year of the surveying de gree course at Unitech, Lae,

chose surveying after reading

careers pamphlets. She was attracted by the idea of work ing out in the open air. Her favourite subjects are maths and science.

Mark Basausau, Henry Igo, and Felix Rotsomana are the latest three Papua New Guinean beneficiaries of schol

arships awarded by the

European Development Fund.

The EDF is a subsidiary of the Commission of the European Communities.

An announcement from the commission’s Port Moresby office said that Mr Basausau, from Sori in the Manus Prov ince, who is a training officer with the PNG Department of Finance, went to London at the end of May to do a three months course in training tech

niques.

Mr Igo, of Porebada village in the Central Province, a pro jects officer with the Depart ment of Commerce, and Mr Rotsomana, from Lemankua on Buka in the North Solo mons, were both to leave at the end of June for Dublin, Ireland, for a three-months course in small industry de

velopment.

Since the end of 1978, the EDF has awarded scholarships to 25 Papua New Guineaais for training in Europe. Total cost of the scholarships so far awarded has been about Kl7O 000.

Two Northern Territory Aus tralian Aboriginals have re cently returned from a three-month home economics study tour to Fiji. They are Mrs Gagadi Nunhirribala, a teach ing assistant with the Northern

Territory Education Depart

ment at Numbulwar near Dar win, and Ms Didjidi Wurragwagwa a community leader with the Angurugu com

munity, Groote Eylandt.

Another group from the Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Consultative Committee is to study aspects of education from early childhood to post secondary levels in Papua New Guinea. Their visit has yet to be organised. Both groups are

sponsored by the Australian

Aboriginal Overseas Study

Awards Scheme.

Popular guests in Australia recently were Ratu Sir George Cakobau, Governor-General of Fiji, and Adi Lady Cakobau making a State visit in which they met Australians from all walks of life and members of Fijian communities living in Australia. Top picture shows the visi tors with Sir Roden Cutler, Governor of New South Wales, and Lady Cutler at Government House, Sydney, and above they meet young Australians in Canberra.

The awards are for Aborigi nals to study programmes re lated to their careers or

community-service activities.

Eight awards are for individuals and two for groups.

One of the individual win ners, Mr Eddie Holroyd of Edward River, Queensland, will visit PNG for 12 weeks to study crocodile farming and marketing methods. Mr Holroyd is leading hand and a crocodile farmer with Applied Ecology Pty Ltd, a company funded by the Australian Government. The company runs a salt-water crocodile farm at Edward River on Cape York Peninsula and is researching other possible

income-producing enterprises

for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island communities.

Mr George Tongerie, a com munity welfare worker with the south Australia Department of Community Welfare, will visit New Zealand, and possibly Fiji for 10 weeks to study youth programmes.

In Saipan the Micronesian Re gional Tourism Council has appointed Gordon C. Tydingco of Guam to be its first execu tive director. Mr Tydingco, who is from Guam, was chosen from applicants in Micronesia, Guam, the Northern Marianas and the US mainland. The Micronesian Regional Tour ism Council was formed in November last year to promote tourism in the region and is composed of Government and industry representatives from Micronesia, Saipan, and Guam.

In New Hebrides in May at the start of a four months’ stay was Bob Kingsbury of Film Aus tralia. His task? To lay the groundwork for the shooting of a film on the country’s

independence celebrations,

due to climax on July 30. The film, expected to cost $A 140 000, is to be Australia’s independence gift to the new nation.

Film Australia has done the same job and made the same kind of independence gift to

Fiji, Papua New Guinea,

Solomon Islands and Kiribati.

Bob was joined in early June by a film crew of three who planned to film for the six weeks before independence,

during independence week,

and for a week afterwards, mainly in the outer islands. A second crew headed by pro ducer Don Murray will concen trate their activity on Efate, where the capital Port-Vila is situated, during the actual week of the independence cel ebrations.

Bob Kingsbury soon became a well-known figure in Port- Vila as he busied himself with interviews with ministers and other notables, getting infor mation about the celebrations and trying to draw out the viewpoints on the prospect of independence of all concerned.

One of the aims of the film is to depict the process by which the country moved towards independence, and in so doing to present various and often

conflicting opinions on the

subject. Bob is finding that with some of the people con cerned, this can be a frustrating

experience.

The first crew will spend

independence week flying with

Keith Barlow in his Twin Comanche and trying to film in as many islands as possible. On

Independence Day, July 30,

they plan to visit Santo, Malekula, Tanna and one other island. The plan is to shoot the actual flag-raising ceremony in small villages on these islands simple affairs which will contrast with the far grander one in Port-Vila, which is to be filmed by the second crew.

The project involves a great deal of organisational effort.

Air Melanesiae is co-operating to see that the film crews and

equipment are moved quickly

and smoothly from point to point. Radio Vanuatu is broad casting messages to outer islands to ensure the crew re ceives co-operation. Burns Philp shipping is involved in moving crews to remoter areas, and the Catholic Mission radio network is at their disposal.

This is not the first job done by the Film Australia people in New Hebrides: they made the successful Taem Bifo Taem Nao, a coverage of last

December’s first-ever National Arts Festival in New Hebrides.

The independence film, like the arts festival production, will have a script in the popular local language Bislama, and will make minimum con cessions to Western audiences.

Katherine Paul.

Solomon Islands Governor- General Sir Baddeley Devesi has accepted an invitation from the Council of the University of the South Pacific to serve as its chancellor for the next three years.

Sir Baddeley formally took

over on May 1 from Fiji’s Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, who left office on April 30 after three years’ service.

Ceremonies for Sir Bad

deley’s formal inauguration

will be held at the next gradu ation in December, when he is

expected to confer degrees.

Western Samoa’s Head of State Malietoa Tanumafili II in May made a full recovery from the effects of drugs he had taken by mistake.

Dr Solia Tapeni, acting director of health, declined to provide details of the accident to the press, but, according to The Samoa Times, His High ness was in a very serious con dition, and only quick action by a medical team from Motootua, under the direction of Dr Solia, prevented a

tragedy.

Prime Minister Tupuola Efi rushed to attend His Highness immediately he learned of the near-fatal accident.

George Tongerie

Time before, time now, in New Hebrides

A happier occasion - His Highness Malietoa Tanumafili II on a re cent visit to Australia with Australian Foreign Minister Andrew Peacock.

Australia has appointed Miss Maris King as High Com missioner in Tonga. She is the first Australian resident diplo mat in Tonga, as the post was

previously held by Australian

diplomats based in Fiji. Aus tralia now has nine diplomatic missions in South Pacific Island countries two in Papua New Guinea, and in

Tonga, New Caledonia, Fiji,

Solomon Islands, New Hebrides, Western Samoa and Nauru.

Mrs Z. N. Mohammed, matron of Lautoka Hospital in Fiji, has retired after 23 years in public health, service including a long period in administrative pos itions. Matron Mohammed, who holds the Fiji Indepen dence Medal for meritorious service to nursing, has

specialised in leadership train

ing for nurses.

The big Fiji Sugar Corporation

has appointed its first locally born managing director in Rasheed Ali who took over re cently from George Moody- Stuart, a mill executive brought in from the West Indies three years ago. Mr Moody-Stuart is on his way to London to head the sugar div ision of Booker Agriculture In ternational, the firm involved in the establishment of a Papua New Guinea sugar industry.

Law students in New Zealand for the first time have elected a Pacific Islander to one of the top positions on the executive of the New Zealand Law Students’ Association. Isikeli Mataitoga from Fiji, a student at Victoria University in Wellington, has been elected vice-president of the associ ation. He is the son of the Fiji Minister for Youth and Sport, Sakiasi Waqanivavalagi.

Seventeen-year-old Pius

Kinaliu is the first Papua New Guinean potter to go for further training to New Zealand under that country’s

cultural exchange policy, con

ducted through its Arts Council.

Pius, a representative of the

Tolai people of the village of Wunadadir, near Rabaul, was enrolled for a three-month course at the Driving Creek potteries, on the Coromandel peninsula, in New Zealand’s North Island.

He planned to take home for exhibition at the South Pacific Festival of Arts the pots he made and fired during his New Zealand stay.

Francis Daly, an English jurist who has been acting as Attorney-General in Solomon Islands for the past nine months has become the country’s Chief Justice. The new Mr Justice Daly, who has taken over from Mr Justice Renn Davis, is 43 and a former legal secretary to the Lord Chancellor in Britain. He has served in Bermuda as Crown Counsel and for several years was Judge Advocate for the de fence forces in Britain. He also has earlier service as a magis trate in Solomon Islands.

Canadian-born Clark Johnson, the new chef at Rarotonga’s Kumete Restaurant, is the latest in a line of international chefs to put down roots in the

Cooks capital.

Clark began his career at 13 under the tutorship of his father also a master chef and baker. Clark later studied culi nary arts at both British Columbia University in Van couver, and the Culinary Arts Institute in New York.

He has worked as a chef in restaurants and hotels in Europe, the US, Asia, Tahiti and South America before

finally going to Rarotonga.

Now he’s there he doesn’t want to leave ‘at least not for five or six years’.

Maui Pokoati, proprietor of the Kumete, with Clark’s help, plans to turn the establishment into a steak house offering a fine selection of wines, fresh fruit, salads, and cheese biscuit

platters.

The Australian airline Qantas has appointed Peter Barnes as its area manager for south-west Pacific, based in Fiji. He re places Richard Porter, who is

to become Qantas manager for Hawaiian Islands. Mr Porter will be taking up his third Pacific Islands appointment for

Qantas, having previously been

manager for Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby.

Pan Am has a new senior executive in the South Pacific following the appointment of

its Regional Managing Direc-

tor Michael Merlini, as head of Far East operations, in Tokyo.

Mr Merlini had directed Pan Am’s South Pacific operations from Sydney for just over three years.

He is probably best known in the South Pacific for success-

fully leading Pan Am’s struggle

to introduce low fares between the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. His tenure as

regional managing director

also saw increases in Pan Am services to the US, including direct flights from Melboume.

He is succeeded in the South

Pacific by John McGhee, 40, formerly Divisional Director Sales and Service for Pan Am’s Northern Division, in New York, Leota Leuluaialii Ituau Ale, 38, has been appointed Western Samoa’s senior commissioner to the South Pacific Corn mission. An MP, Leota is a for mer Speaker of the Legislative

Assembly.

He was educated at Whan

garei Boys’ High School, New

Zealand, and studied law at Wellington’s Victoria Univer sity. He has travelled widely as his country’s representative at many regional and Common

wealth meetings,

Another diplomatic appoint

ment announced recently in Apia is that of Sala Suivai, a

prominent Opposition mem

ber of the Legislative As sembly, who has become Western Samoa’s represen tative to neighbouring American Samoa.

Diplomat Mr Bernard Oberieuter (left) of Papua New Guinea greets Mr Fred Kaad of Australian International Training Institute at the in auguration in Sydney of the Australia-PNG Friendship The Trust, conceived by Dr Tom Selby, has been sponsored by Australian servicemen and ex-servicemen who will provide books and scholar ships for PNG students.