Aid Wasted In Latin America’

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30741, 4 May 1965, Page 16

Aid Wasted In Latin America’

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, May 3. Millions of dollars of desperately needed American aid were being wasted in povertystricken Latin America because of lack of sound research, administration and education, said a senior lecturer in geography at Victoria University, Dr. R. F. Watters, today.

He recently spent 14 months working for the Food and Agriculture Organisation on problems of agriculture with the peasants of Southern Mexico, Venezuela and Peru. “The alliance for progress is achieving a great deal through co-operation between American states and from aid and technical help from the United States,” he said. “But there is a colossal amount of money wasted because of lack of sound research, failures in administration and because aid programmes are not adjusted to suit village conditions. “When this great loss is placed alongside the absolute abject poverty, disease and malnutrition which affects millions of men, women and children in these lands, this wasted effort is tragic,” he said.

“One example was a recommendation by one large Latin American country for a multimillion dollar agricultural project,” said Dr. Watters. “The whole project, covering hundreds of thousands of acres, was based on a soil survey on the basis of which certain crops were to be

grown. The country has only three fully trained soil scientists.

“It was on the soil survey carried out by one of these men that the whole scheme was founded. His classification was based on only the top half-inch of soil. “Another example was a very large multi-millon dollar irrigation scheme. This had been correctly located but it simply would not operate. The water would not flow through it because the local people who had carried out the project had not allowed sufficient fall for the water to flow from one end to the other. “Thus a lack of basic skills could have disastrous results,” he said.