Peoples Of S. Pacific To Review Progress

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29855, 22 June 1962, Page 17

Peoples Of S. Pacific To Review Progress

(N.ZJ , .A.-R«ut»r—CopirripU)

[By

TSKINCt DOWNEY)

PAGO PAGO (American Samoa). The people of “Paradise” will meet in Pago Pago next month to discuss their problems. “Paradise,” so called by writers from Robert Louis Stevenson to James Mitchener, is the vast and lovely South Pacific. “Paradise” has trouble with malaria, leprosy, filiaris, tuberculosis and infant welfare, and its economy depends too much on a single commodity—copra.

People from 18 territories in the South Pacific will review their progress at the fifth South Pacific Conference, a triennial meeting sponsored by the South Pacific Commission, which will be held for 12 days from July 18 in Pago Pago, the capital of American-adminis-tered Eastern Samoa. The South Pacific Commission is an international effort to raise the standard of living and provide opportunities for social development among islanders of the south and south-west Pacific. It represents the six governments which have territories in the area: Australia, New Zealand. the Netherlands, France, Britain and the United States. The area for which the commission operates stretches from Dutch New Guinea, in the west, to Tahiti in the east—about 7000 miles and from Micronesia in the north •which includes Bikini atoll) to Australia’s Norfolk Island in the south, about level with Brisbane.

The area is divided among a large number and variety of local administrations, yet across its length and breadth there are many common problems.

Fiction And Fact Fiction has sometimes presented the people of the South Pacific as laughing, golden-skinned people lazing under breadfruit trees, idly plucking a banana when hungry or catching some of the millions of fish just waiting to be taken from the nearby (blue and sheltered) lagoon. In fact, some of them are black-skinned, dour mountaineers who cannot get enough meat and who even today, in parts of inland New Guinea, make up this dietary deficiency with the aid of a late neighbour. Improving their health—from the most advanced to the most retarted—means not only building hospitals and study of diseases, but farreaching research into infant welfare, the people’s diet and feeding habits, the commission states. This in turn calls • for efforts to introduce new crops, attempts to develop fisheries, experiments in animal husbandry, as well as housing for the people. Problems of social .welfare automatically follow, with education first on the list. There are about 1000 different languages and dialects in the area—7oo in New Guinea alone, according to the Australian Administration and none of the races has a written language. As this activity improves the islanders’ living standards, their demands for manufactured goods—outboard motors, matches, kerosene and tinned food—increase.

This brings the final serpent into the Garden of Eden —money as a medium of exchange instead of barter, and

that means turning to organised production of commoditlee such as copra, getting a regular job. and the manufacture of goods. The South Pacific Commission was formed after World War II to study these problems and devise means of overcoming them, but its findings are given as advice, and are not binding, Agenda Agenda items for the fifth conference make it obvious the people of •’Paradise” have made their choice for the future. Their desires are reflected in subjects such as business methods and practice, improved agricultural produce and marketing efficiency, organised adult education schemes, ways of obtaining a reasonable balance' between social advancement and economic development with due regard to labour problems and increasing population, the changing role of women in the South Pacific. Delegates no doubt will listen with interest to un. official representatives from a territory which was officially represented at the last conference—Western Samoa.

Western Samoa is th* flrat fully-independent South Pacific territory. It gained its independence a year ago after first being governed by Germany and then administered by New Zealand as a mandated and later trust territory.

The commisaion’a fifth conference will be held in newly-built high aehool buildings at Utulei, near the foot of the jungle-dad slopes of jagged Mount Mata fan. towering over Pago Pago'a harbour.

Some 70 delegate*, including a fair sprinkling of women, will be at the meeting and be accommodated at Utulei.

Women have been playing a growing part in the conference since the first was held at Suva in 1950 and at Rabaul, in 1959. a woman was chairman of a standing committee on social welfare and health. After the conference opened, delegatee will divide into two standing committee* —on economic development and health and aociei welfare. They will elect their own chairman and deputy chairman and will have full control of proceedings.