Population Control Is “Greatest Need”

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31658, 19 April 1968, Page 2

Population Control Is “Greatest Need”

The world’s greatest need was not hunger, education, or technical and financial aid, but population control, Mr Frank Heard, inter - church aid secretary for the National Council of Churches in New Zealand, said at a meeting of the Canterbury Travel Club yesterday. Even Western Samoa, which Mr Heard considers a Pacific paradise, would soon suffer from its population explosion, with 50 per cent of its 120,000 people under the age of 15. “When they leave school there will be no work for them. Unemployment will come, dissension, and eventually starvation unless something is done to curb the birtb rate,” he said. Similar Plight Fiji was also in a similar plight. Racked with racial problems and rivalry between Fijians and Indians, it was by no means an island paradise. “I even detected rivalry in size of families. They are not interested in family planning or population control because if they were to reduce their families they would become a minority. Burma was ensuring that it developed Burmese by excluding foreigners, said Mr Heard, who described his visits to South-East Asian countries during a world tour. Development was slow but everything was “ticking along nicely.” Unlike Thailand, where the main source of earning came from Bangkok's 15,000

bar girls who ministered to the needs of American servicemen! on leave, Burma did not want tourists. 24-hour Stay Favoured nationalities, which did not Include Europeans or the British, were allowed a 24-hour visa and “not a second more.” Mr Heard’s outward flight departed several hours after the limit and others from the East Asian Christian Council of Churches conference he attended in Bangkok were sure to be, arrested. Lord Mountbatten, and Sir Bernard Fergusson had been the only two ever allowed an extended stay, he said. A visit to the island of Bali would give a tourist a good holiday, he said, but he found the rest of Indonesia chaotic. Suffering from too much nationalism and a lack of public spirited citizens, government was sluggish and suspect to corruption and bribery. Of the $27,000,000 the World Council of Churches will give to under-developed countries a fraction would help support one of its workers who is trying to persuade Indonesians to graze their sheep instead of keeping them in hutches and hand feeding them, he said.

Aunt, Not Sister.—The late Miss Agnes G. S. Merton, was an aunt of Thomas Merton, a well known religious writer, not a sister, as reported in “The Press” yesterday. The error is regretted.