FACING STARVATION

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 466, 25 February 1933, Page 4

FACING STARVATION

RUATAHUNA MAORIS POTATO CROPS BLIGHTED AND NQ WORK OFFERING." A SERIOUS SITUATION. With their main source of food supply ruined by blight the Maoris in the Ruatahuna and Onini districts are faced with actual starvation this coming winter unless some means are found to enable them to earn sufficient money to tide them over., Everywhere in the countryside the . potato crops are suffering from hlight and the blackened haulms stand above rotting tubers. A prominent native told a "Morning Post" representative , the other day that unless something was found for them in the way of work during the coming winter whole families would be faced with I actual starVation, for they were largely dependent upon their potato crops and though they had been hard

enough put to it to live last winter they were now at the end of their tether. Last year the crops were fair and the Maoris then had a terrible struggle for, but for the assistance of the Public Works department who had placed about fifty of them on road widening jobs, they would have had no money at all. As it is they hav.e no word of any relief work, no word of any assistance from the Native Minister and with a dull resentment are facing not dire poverty, for that is always with them, but sheer want. What little money they did get last winter barely suffieed to carry them through the snow season, for the distriet is subject to h'eavy snowfalls

being over 1500 feet above sea-level and stores are terribly dear. A seventy pound bag of sugar costs 34/much of which price isr'tLue to the high freights and the pittance earned upon relief work barely suffices to keep body and sonl together. It has been proudly said that in this fair Dominion no one should be unable to get sufficient food to live upon but that does not apply here. It is an absolute fact that last winter season children arrived at school with- | out having had anything to eat since the previous evening. And this when the ground was a foot deep in snow and the bitter winter wind was whistling through the ragged clothing which was all that they had to cover them. They have streams to wade through too before they can get to school, insufficiently clad and ehilled with the icy water dragging their numbed feet through the snow to sit shivering through hours of school.

There is a remedy, there. must be a remedy. According to enquiries made from the Public Works department, these Maoris in the Ruatahuna district are hard workers when they have the work to do. An examination of the road work they did will confirm that and it 'is stated by Mr. F. I Parlc, District Engineer that their work was exeellent. There were no better men engaged on the roads in the district. The road undoubtedly needs further widening and here is a useful work to which these men could he put if only the money were available.

With their ruined crops, and a I bitter winter before them the future of the Ruatahuna Maoris looks back. Surely some loosening of the Unemployment Boards pursestrings can be made to permit of these families being allowed to live.