Official work camp view

Sir—As an interested person and a participant in both Fijian and Samoan work camps I feel that much of the present spate of criticism about these work camps is either unfair or untrue. I would point out:

1. The criticisms advanced in the article "Student Work Camps not worthwhile" (Salient Vol. 29 No. 3) is neither valid nor applicable to NZUSA work camps. This article was about the New Guinea project organised by the Australian national student body. In Samoa, which receives a snide passing reference, conditions were completely different. Students did not "flock into Samoa as unskilled banana planters."

Those concerned with banana planting, never more than eight of the 15, demonstrated modern planting techniques which they were shown by staff of the Department of Agriculture. This was a constructive task because of (a) the local attitude that outmoded planting techniques are sufficient (b) a banana shortage (c) the hope that one area of a demonstrably larger yield would inspire other villages to adopt modern ideas. Europeans were needed because of the structure of authority in Western Samoa-Samoans only being able to instruct if they hold a senior title.

Students were needed because otherwise European labour would not have been available. This venture was an economic success, the Director of Agriculture estimating that the 58 acres planted would return at least an annual income of £3500. This sum is far in excess of the expense incurred by the Department of Agriculture over the students.

The presence of the student group was appreciated by both Samoans and local Europeans— this welcome being shown in the press, on the radio, and to individual students.

Other students who went to Samoa worked with the Departments of Education and Statistics. These were areas where some qualification or experience was possessed by the students and a shortage of trained personnel existed.

2. Part of the philosophy lying behind the establishment of work camps by NZUSA was that such projects should both afford students an inexpensive method of seeing other areas than New Zealand and some knowledge of how people of very different cultural backgrounds think, work, and live. Work camps are a means to this end—not a fulfilment of idealistic and unreal benevolence.

Far more is to be gained by seeing a country while living and working there than as a tourist. That the Fiji work camp cost students £2000 is quite reasonable, this figure including return air fares and accommodation for a month for 27 students.

3. In neither Fiji nor Samoa did students take "work away from an already under-employed indigenous work force." In western Samoa students were a necessary and practical help. In Fiji, students worked for the only social agency—the J. P. Bayley clinic. This agency had a limited budget and a large amount of land to develop for planting. If students had not been available the work done would have been beyond the resources of the clinic.

The budget of the clinic limited its number of employees to six; students providing extra labour that the clinic would not otherwise have been able to afford The local labour that finished the work was a press-ganged church group—not employed labour as has been implied.

That the Fiji work camp was not an unqualified success is undeniable. The project could have been a better-chosen one, although if a drought had not occurred Mr. Taylor's prophecy that six acres of rice worth approximately £1200 would be planted would have been fulfilled.

Another factor foiling success was, to quote from Mr. Nicholls's wryly amusing article, that the planting of this particular rice was the brain-child of a one-dimensional Christian to whom work was the greatest virtue, followed closely by more work. These two so-called "acts of God" were the main factors responsible for the project's small material returns. However, the project did achieve acceptance of the idea of students' work camps in Fiji.

That this is so is demonstrated by the fact that further students are returning in May to take part in specialised projects where their university training is of help.

For example, a group of four medical students are to help in a campaign against Tb and others are to work in the archives or the museum.

J. Austin

National Director of Work Camps

This Letter has been slightly abridged. We don't normally reply to letters but would ask Mr. Austin the following rhetorical questions:

1. What purpose is served by inflating the value of a work camp seven-fold?

2. What right have students to expect cheap holidays, however educational, merely in order to carry out labouring work (e. g. Fiji or New Caledonia)?

3. The Freedom from Hunger contribution of £400 to the Fiji camp would have hired forty Fijian labourers for four weeks to work for the Bayley clinic. Can students—not even trained in rice planting—justify their cost against this?—Ed.