OPPOSED TO BARTERING

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30919, 27 November 1965, Page 16

OPPOSED TO BARTERING

Malaysia was making efforts to stop Singapore, now independent, from resuming its barter trade with Indonesia because of the danger of infiltration of arms and saboteurs into Malaysia, said the director of Malaysian television (Mr Ow Kheng Law) in Christchurch yesterday.

“Barter trade boats taking copra and rubber from Indonesia could also bring in arms and spies into Singapore,” said Mr Law.

From this entry point, they could make their way up the Malaysian peninsula, he said. Mr Law is the first head of Malaysian television with beadquarters in Kuala Lumpur. The television service began less than two years ago and already serves 52,000 television licence holders.

He is one of a party of 11 journalists, and newspaper and radio executives who travelled on a 8.0.A.C. inaugural flight from the United Kingdom via Southeast Asia to Auckland and are now touring South Island scenic resorts. Mr Law said that the “man in the street” in Malaysia was not affected by Singapore’s secession. “I think both sides are attacking the problem very well now,” he said. “They know one cannot live separately from the other.

“They are talking now and making arrangements, so that both territories will not suffer financially, economically or politically, and there is no likelihood of armed conflict between the two. The

politicians on both sides say that Malaysia must become one again,” he said. Mr Law said that Malaysia was hoping that Indonesian confrontation would end, so that both countries could get down to the business of developing their countries. FIVE NEWSPAPERS Another member of the touring party is Mr Aw Tok Jit, the assistant general manager of a Chinese-language newspaper in Singapore. He said his father had recently imported machinery to improve production of the family’s chain of five daily newspapers in Singapore. Penang, and Kuala Lumpur. Type being set in Singapore would be simultaneously set in the other centres through a medium of face facsimilies. He said that no members of any of the newspaper staffs would lose their jobs on account of the automation. They would be given alternative jobs. Mr Aw Tok Jit, aged 23, was educated at Wellesley College, Melbourne, and the Occident al College, Los Angeles.