MALAYSIAN AID

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30957, 13 January 1966, Page 10

MALAYSIAN AID

“N.Z. Giving Generously” (N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, Jan. 12. New Zealand, considering its size and economy, was giving generously to Malaysia, said Mr E. W. Lawrence, Director of the Sarawak Lands and Survey Department. Mr Lawrence, an Englishman who has lived in Sarawak for 17 years, is in New Zealand to recruit surveyors. He said in Wellington today that New Zealand, as well as helping with defence and education, had organised and was staffing a surveyors’ school which was run jointly by Sarawak and Saba at Kuching. “New Zealand paid for all the equipment for the school. This is just part of the help given under the Colombo Plan,” said Mr Lawrence. New Zealand surveyors were encouraged to go to Sarawak partly because the Torrens land system used there was also used in New Zealand. “Another reason for the recruiting drive here is that the country is so close to Malaysia and South-east Asia,” he said. During his 10 days in New Zealand, Mr Lawrence will interview interested people in Wellington and Christchurch. He has already spent three days in Auckland. Later he will go to Australia to continue the recruiting drive.

“1 am hoping to see about, a dozen people before I leave New Zealand but there is a dire shortage of land surveyors here as there is in Sarawak,” he said. Mr Lawrence, who was in the Royal Engineers, joined the British Colonial Service at the end of the war and went as a surveyor to Sarawak, where he stayed. “It is a most interesting place to live in,” he said. “Surveying is a fairly challenging job because until recently most of the country was not mapped."