RADIO SETS IN SARAWAK

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28821, 16 February 1959, Page 17

RADIO SETS IN SARAWAK

Subsidy Paid By Government WELLINGTON, February 15. In at least one place in the world—Sarawak, Borneo—radio plays so important a part that the Government subsidies the purchase of sets. In Wellington, two Colombo Plan students from Sarawak, Messrs M. J. Jemuri and S. K. Tham, explained this unusual generosity. The State has a population of 500,000, most of whom live in the interior and engage in subsistence farming. Communications are so bad that wireless is practically the only means of keeping the inhabitants informed of new developments. Under the direction of a New Zealander, Mr F. Brooker, of the New Zealand Broadcasting Service, the Sarawak Government last year embarked on a course of broadcasts to schools. Mr Tham, who was a broadcasting technician in Kucking, the capital, and has come to New Zealand to take a degree in electrical engineering, said that radios were distributed on the basis of one to every long house. The long house —literally, a long house in which many families live—is roughly the equivalent of a village.

The sets are battery-operated and there are transmitters and telephones in the main centres. Mr Jemuri was a lay magistrate in Kucking, concerned with administration. He has come to New Zealand to take a law degree, which will permit him to become a stipendiary magistrate in Sarawak, though he, like Mr Tham, will be bound to the Government for six years after his return. AIRCRAFT LOADING SYSTEM Rights Purchased By Syndicate (New Zeaiana Press Association! WHANGAREI, February 15. A London syndicate representing aircraft manufacturers and operators has purchased, for a large sum, the companies owning rights to develop and use the cargon method of handling air freight The cargon system was devised and developed in New Zealand by Straits Air Freight Express to speed up air transport between the North and South Islands. The system involves the use of a removable and interchangeable floor which can be loaded before the cargo aeroplane reaches the aerodrome and is ready to be rolled into th# aeroplane on its arrival.