THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 29, 1984. Good deeds next door

Press, 29 August 1984, Page 16

THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 29, 1984. Good deeds next door

In the year to March 31, 1984, New Zealanders gave away more than $BO million in foreign aid, or rather more than $25 each. More than half this amount went to 11 small countries in the South Pacific region and the biggest single item — $ll.B million — was spent helping two South Pacific shipping lines. Critics of New Zealand’s aid effort sometimes maintain that more should be given away. This country contributes no more than about one third of one per cent of its gross national product to foreign aid, not a high figure by the standards of the world’s richest countries. Avenues exist, however, for those who want to give more, without further demands on taxpayers. Substantial private aid flows from New Zealand through voluntary organisations. Last year, the State subsidised private aid with nearly $1 million of assistance. More important than the volume of aid, from New Zealand or elsewhere, is the use to which the aid is put. In this, New Zealand’s record is among the best in the world. New Zealanders, putting emphasis on practical ingenuity, have been eager to adapt assistance to suit the needs of less technological societies. In such matters as irrigation, health care, and animal husbandry, institutions such as Lincoln College have worked with people in the field to provide improvements, in South-East Asia and the South Pacific, that are at once simple and effective, but not necessarily very costly. Sometimes, as in giving assistance to Indonesia’s dairy industry, the help given works against New Zealand’s interests by increasing self-sufficiency in products that New Zealand might otherwise sell to the country receiving aid.

Some of the most effective aid of all often passes unremarked. It does not appear in the aid allocations of either the State or private organisations. Such aid is unplanned. It simply happens because of the readiness of New Zealanders, their do-it-yourself approach, and the good fortune that people with appropriate

skills are on the spot when needed. This week, a “Press” reporter in Funafuti, the capital of the tiny western Pacific island group of Tuvalu, came upon a good example of spontaneous aid. The naval vessel Monowai has been at Funafuti making a marine survey and helping to provide communications for the South Pacific Forum meeting, both activities in themselves useful items of aid. The ship has helped to take medical help to outlying islands, also a form of aid. Even more, however, skilled tradesmen in the crew have been able to repair a variety of equipment in the island’s hospital. A few hours, and a few dollars worth of materials, have restored the hospital’s sewing machine, its X-ray machine, and its steriliser, among other things. Officers on the ship gave the hospital their washing machine. None of this assistance shows up as formal aid. None required extensive surveys, planning, reports, or supervision by experts. The cost has been small, and some of it has come from the pockets of the Navy men on the spot. The benefits, to a remote hospital on a tropical island, with no ready access to skilled maintenance for ageing equipment, has been enormous. Such an approach is not always appropriate in offering assistance to Pacific neighbours. The incident suggests, however, that simple, practical help — neighbourly good deeds — continue to have an important place in any system of aid. There is a lesson here for New Zealand, and a lesson that New Zealand might pass on to larger and seemingly more generous contributors of sophisticated assistance that sometimes fails to fit in with local conditions. Expensive surveys, international experts, reports, budgets, and large bureaucracies may sometimes do less for needy people than a straightforward application of common sense, supported by sound knowledge and sufficient — but not necessarily expensive — materials. The object is to achieve the best results, not maximum expenditure.