APPRENTICES FROM SOLOMON ISLANDS

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29901, 15 August 1962, Page 24

APPRENTICES FROM SOLOMON ISLANDS

Training In N.Z. Possible

An approach may be made to the Government by the Melanesian Mission for permission for Solomon Islanders to be sent to New Zealand for apprenticeship trainins and post - apprenticeship courses. Mr B. R. Ayers, of Christchurch, bead of the mission's workshop and training centre at Taroaniara, British Solomon Islands Protectorate. told this to a reporter of "The Press." "New Zealand is usually quite willing to take islanders and other overseas students for poet-primary .school or university, and there seems no reason why they should not also come for trade training,” said Mr Ayers. Hie move would be a new departure for the Solomon Islands, be added. Education in the protectorate was almost entirely formal and academic, and no provision existed for the legal recognition of apprenticeships, so that there were very few skilled tradesmen and few semi-skilled workers. At Taroaniara, the mission trained ship engineers and navigators and also ran five-year courses in printing and bookbinding, shipbuilding and repair, and mechanical and electrical engineering

Fire Less.—Seven hundred tons of printed forms, worth £200,000, belonging to 17 government departments was lost in the Aotea quay store first last year, said the annual report of the Printing and Stationery Department. (—CPA.)