people

Parameswaran Pillai Sreeni vasan, 41, a member of the staff of the Indian Embassy at Rangoon (Burma), has been appointed India’s high commis sioner to Fiji, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Tonga and Vanuatu, succeeding C. P.

Ravindranathan. As in the past, the new high commission er will be based in Suva.

John Bramble Noss is the new British high commissioner to Solomon Islands, succeeding George Stansfield, CBE, who left Honiara for retirement on March 2. Mr Noss has served in British missions in Beirut, Copenhagen, Moscow, San tiago and Pretoria, and lately, in New York as Consul (Commer cial) in the British Trade Deve lopment Office.

Western Samoa’s head of state, His Highness Malietoa Tanu mafili 11, has appointed Misa Foni Retzlaff as the country’s Attorney-General.

Though only 33, the well known lawyer-businessman has been in private practice in Apia for more than 10 years. He set up the third law office in Apia in 1975 shortly after he was admitted as barrister and solici tor of the Supreme Court of New Zealand in December, 1974.

William V. Kattan, Vanuatu’s former Attorney-General, has returned to the United King dom after having successfully handed over the post of attor

ney-general to a Ni-Vanuatu, Silas Hakwa.

Mr Kattan began his service in Vanuatu almost six years ago, in the troubled pre-inde pendence period of 1980.

Richard Prebble, New Zea land’s minister for Pacific Is lands affairs, has appointed Mrs Poko Morgan and Mr Tino Meleisea as members of his advisory council.

Mrs Morgan, who was a scholarship student to New Zealand from the Cook Islands and a member of the Cook Islands Legislative Assembly, is a resource teacher at the Multi- Cultural Resource Centre, Tolopua. The death late last year of Ratu Daniela created the vacancy to which Mrs Mor gan was appointed.

A Samoan who has lived in New Zealand for 30 years, Mr Meleisea is an executive officer in the Department of Labour, and a leader in community organisations in Porirua, near Wellington. Bill Coppell.

After serving 20 years with the Food and Agriculture Organisa tion of the UN (FAO), Dr Gidon Blumenfeld, the FAO Repre sentative in the South Pacific, left the organisation at the end of 1985, taking early retire ment. Together with his wife Triska he left Apia where they had lived for the past four years to settle in their home at Rarangi near Blenheim on New Zealand’s South Island.

Owning a small piece of agricultural land there, Gidon

hopes to spend some of his time experimenting with crops and, as he puts it, trying to put into practice what he has been preaching for years.

Originally from Israel, he trained as a horticulturist then did post-doctoral work as a Fulbright Fellow at University of California, Riverside. Then, joining the FAO, he served first in India, followed by a five-year spell at FAO Headquarters in Rome, Italy. In 1975 he and his wife came to the South Pacific where Dr Blumenfeld was de signated FAO representative, based in Suva.

After being called back on assignment to Rome HQ once more, he and Triska very reluc tantly left the South Pacific region. However his duties con tinued to be related to FAO activities in the region which enabled him to make frequent visits from Rome. Eventually, in 1982, he was again appointed FAO representative in the South Pacific and established the new FAO representation in Western Samoa with responsi bility for FAO activities in all FAO member countries in this area.

Having served 20 fulfilling years with FAO he feels it’s now time for a change. “We’re both very glad though,” he adds “that this change doesn’t in volve moving away from the South Pacific because we couldn’t imagine settling any where else”.

Most French-speaking people who have been patients in Sydney’s hospitals over the past 63 years would probably have fond memories of Froggy Daly (PIM Mar. plO).

Froggy has been a French interpreter in the Sydney medi cal system since she arrived here with her father from Noumea when she was just 17.

In late February she cele brated her 80th birthday while still on the job.

Froggy started interpreting for the French-speaking pa tients of Macquarie Street doc tors in 1923 and continued until her retirement 12 years ago.

She then became a member of the Royal Prince Alfred

Hospital’s voluntary service, where she’s been ever since.

Froggy travels from her home in the western Sydney suburb of Revesby into the city, which means her day starts at 5 a.m. She arrives at the hospital at 7.30 a.m. to begin a volunt ary shift which can last up to 12 hours.

But after an illness earlier this year the service decided to limit her workload to only three days a week.

“I usually end up at the hospital on my days off any way,” Froggy said at her sur prise birthday party.

“As long as my legs can move me and I can still use my mind, I’ll be here.”

Australian-born Geoffrey McLaughlin, customer services manager for Air Niugini, re ceived an M.B.E. in the 1986 New Year’s Honors List. He was honored for his services to the tourist and aviation industry in Papua New Guinea.

Mr McLaughlin has lived in PNG for the past 14 years, eight of them spent working for Air Niugini.

A Baruni man is giving Hanuabada’s Poreporena High School, Port Moresby, a facelift all for free.

Obaha Tau, a national Capi tal District Interim Commission carpenter who is on furlough, is patching up holes in the roofs and walls of classrooms, rebuilding broken desks and repainting the rooms.

The headmaster, Eric Cuba, said Mr Tua was not getting paid for the work, which he generously offered to do.

Mr Cuba said it would have been nice to replace the present classroom, but financial difficul ties forced them to build only two toilet blocks, a shower block and to buy fencing wire and timber to replace old ones.

Jack Graham, former chief executive of Carpenters Fiji Ltd., resigned with effect from January after five years with the company. He went to Fiji from David Jones Aust. Pty. Ltd., where he was director of opera tions.

Keri Hulme (left) receives the Pegasus Prize for Literature from US Ambassador to New Zealand H. Monroe Browne.

Photo Mobil Oil New Zealand.