New Zealanders Urged To Work In Asia

Press, Volume C, Issue 29691, 8 December 1961, Page 5

New Zealanders Urged To Work In Asia

An appeal to New Zealanders to give personal aid to the 600,000,000 Asian people of the Commonwealth was made by the DeputyHigh Commissioner for the United Kingdom (Mr F. A, K. Harrison) at the annual prize-giving ceremony at the Shirley Boys’ High School yesterday. Mr Harrison, who has recently arrived in New Zealand, had spent five years in India and Pakistan. New Zealand was well known in Pakistan for the cement factory and livestock schemes it had established. Mr Harrison said, but he would like to see more persons going to work in Asia on their own initiative. “I would like to think that there are some among you today who will go out, perhaps just for two or three years, to some other Commonwealth country—perhaps as a doctor, or an engineer—to give them your help,” he said. Poverty was the chief problem facing the new Commonwealth countries. “Doubtless this poverty, which we have never experienced, has always existed in Asia. There is nothing good about it,” he said. It was up to the more prosperous countries of the Commonwealth to help to bring about the only solution of this problem—economic development. Better agriculture, more engineering works, more factories, more trained men and women, and better education, were needed urgently. The needs ot these people were tremendous. The basic monthly pay of a Pakistani labourer was £5. To ensure that a family of four was able to have a well-balanced diet. £7 a month was required. “Are we doing enough about it?” asked Mr Harrison. "If we, the democratic nations, cannot show the way to a better way of life for the poorer countries of Asia and Africa, someone else will—the Communist counhe said.

Since the old Commonwealth had been replaced by the new, whose members were all independent and equal, no longer administered by one country, the way to help was for richer members to share their prosperity. . “That would be a practical demonstration of the fact that in this modern age and day, no country, neither the greatest nor the least, can live for itself alone,” he said.