FROM SAMOA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 234, 2 October 1937, Page 16

FROM SAMOA.

HOUSE WORKERS. A NOVEL SUGGESTION. N.Z. DOMESTIC SHORTAGE. (From Our Own Correspondent.) APIA (Western Samoa), Sept. 20. Auckland newspapers received here have reports of an acute shortage of domestic help. It is stated that it is almost impossible to obtain a reasonably competent girl, and even more difficult to retain those engaged. Even the importation of Chinese "housebovs" is suggested as a remedy to meet the situation. Here in Western Samoa, under the New Zealand mandate, and among a locally born population of mixed European and Sainoan descent, there are available a large number of young girls, well educated, healthy, clean and mostly competent house workers, who would be only too glad to avail themselves of an opportunity to enter into an engagement as houseworkers with reputable Auckland families. The Hon. A. G. Smyth, Europeanelected member of the Legislative Council, has kindly promised to do all in his ! power to support such a scheme and submit same for confirmation to the New Zealand Government. Any applicants in Auckland would have to be interviewed, preferably by a Government investigating officer, to make sure that the girls would go to reputable families. The applicants would have to pay the passages of the girls to Auckland, and would have to guarantee also the return passage. The girls would have to engage to work for a term of, say, three years. Only strong and healthy girls over 16 would be selected locally for the work; girls of good

character and moral standing, with a good knowledge of the English language and with experience in housework. The prolonged stay of a large number of locally-born girls in New Zealand would tend to make the small mandated territory, of which so little is known in New Zealand, better known there, and, on the other hand, would make New Zealand life and New Zealand people better understood in Samoa.