N.Z. Peace Corps In Asia Proposed

Press, Volume C, Issue 29488, 14 April 1961, Page 15

N.Z. Peace Corps In Asia Proposed

(By N-ZP.A. Stag Correspondent, DEREK ROUND, who was recently in Bangkok]

The idea ot teams of New Zealanders working in Asian countries along the lines of President Kennedy’s Peace Corps is finding support from some New Zealand diplomats who know Asia welL The idea of New Zealanders living and working in Asian countries is certainly not new. Well over 100 New Zealanders have gone to Asian countries under Colombo Plan technical aid schemes.

Under the New Zealand University Students’ Association's graduate employment scheme, young New Zealanders are sharing the same conditions and pay rates as the Indonesians they are teaching.

In Bangkok during the recent S.E-A.T.O. conference, the Prime Minister, Mr Holyoake, met several New Zealanders working in Thailand. Among these was Mr Alan Benham, of the Ministry of Works, Wellington, who is professor of hydrology and water power engineering at S E.A.T.O.’s Graduate School of Engineering at Chulalongkorn University. And there was softlyspoken Mrs Spence-Williams, of Wellington, a retired hospital matron who offered her services to the Thai Government and who is now work-

ing in a 500-patient leprosarium in northern Thailand. Mrs Spence-Williams says she went to Thailand as a private citizen for no other reason than that she thought she might be able to de something useful there. “I just felt it was a pity to be leading a comfortable life in Wellington when I could be putting my training to some use somewhere where people really needed help,” she said.

There are others. Some New Zealanders have gone to Asia bcause they welcomed the chance to work in different conditions in a different country—and, they admit, because the Government wanted them to go. Some have gone because they felt a strong desire to help Asians improve their living conditions. But, according to External Affairs Department officials and the New Zealanders themselves, almost all have developed a warm affection for the people they have met in the countries where they are working. The New’ Zealand Government is continuing its contributions to worthwhile capital aid prospects in Asia—the great Indus Waters canal scheme, the Indian milk projects, a sugar mill in Pakistan. civil service training and

land development projects in Malaya, a survey project in Borneo and the supply of New Zealand-designed jet boats for the Mekong river, among others. But in some Asian countries New Zealand officials sometimes find it difficult to select suitable projects for New Zealand to aid financially. It is in these countries particularly that some officials would rather see New Zealand aid take the form of New Zealanders working in the fields and schools and hospitals and workshops. Thailand and troubled Laos are two countries where New Zealand officials see scope for increased "grass roots” aid by New Zealanders themselves.

Last year the Royal New Zealand Air Force airdropped £5OOO worth of school supplies to rural areas of Laos. Some New Zealanders in Bangkok see great possibilities for more of this type of aid. One New Zealand diplomat in Bangkok made no secret of his belief that New Zealand teams comprising say a young farmer, a nurse and a school teacher could do tremendously valuable work in Laos and in the rural areas of Thailand.

New Zealand has been paying for a Food and Agricultural Organisation expert in a United Nations team working in Laos. But some officials think a team of New Zealanders would give this country a closer link with the area.

There are many problems in getting New Zealand exnerts to serve overseas. The humid conditions in many Asian countries is itself a big disadvantage of living and working there. Plumbing is seldom as good as it is at home.

But there seems to be a growing feeling that a call for young New Zealanders to serve in Asia could produce the same enthusiastic response that President Kennedy’s Peace Corps plan has in America.