The Fiji Times excerpts from January 1 to

JANUARY 1

A HUGE $137.50 a ton increase in copra a tonne increase in copra prices the Fiji Coconut Board has smashed all price records for the industry. The board set a price of $423 a tonne for Fiji grade one copra and $413 a tonne for grade two. Last month’s Fiji grade one price was 4285.50, another record.

JANUARY 2

SUVA will get a new primary school which parents will build in desperation because they cannot get their children into overcrowded government schools anymore. The parents have support from companies, which say expatriate staff often will not work in Suva unless a high standard of primary education for their children is guaranteed.

JANUARY 3

RELATIVES and friends of a Suva man who was officially dead had their grief turn into joy when they learned that he was alive. The acting medical superintendent of the Colonial War Memorial Hospital, Dr Joe Cassidy, said there had been a regrettable error at the time of death.

JANUARY 4

TWO Fiji shipowners are ready to resume the Lau services which the Maritime Cooperative Association ship, maintained until her loss last month. The Indian High Commissioner in Fiji, Mr Bhagwan Singh, said that India had offered to sell two ships for the services. He said the final decision on buying the ships was in the hands of the Fiji Government.

JANUARY 5

A MAN entered a Lami house containing five young children, drank the householder’s liquor, assaulted his housegirl then abducted his six-year-old daughter, the Suva court heard. Assistant Superintendent, Shiu Shankar, said that on December 28, a 35-year-old company manager of Vatuvia Road, and his wife went out in the evening leaving their five children in the care of a housegirl.

JANUARY 7

POLICE are looking for vandals who stoned a taxi and a bus in Suva. Vandals who stoned a side window of a bus at Sukanaivalu Road in Nabua caused 430 worth of damage. The bus was carrying passengers but no one was injured. The back window of a taxi broke when vandals stoned it in Nasinu.

JANUARY 8

FIJI consumers will suffer higher prices for some basic foods and household commodities under new price control orders. The increases include big jumps in the prices of ghee and cooking oil and rises in the prices of milk, butter, kerosene, washing soap and tinned fish.

JANUARY 9

FIJI Industries Limited, the local cement manufacturer, will spend $140,000 on a plan to beat the fuel oil crisis. The company will become the first major industrial operation in Fiji to switch from oil to coal power. Coal would probably be imported from near Newcastle, Australia, in a chartered ship.

JANUARY 10

RAIN and fuel shortage have slowed the pace at which workers are rebuilding Queens Road between Suva and Nadi. But the eighteen consultants for the road project say motorists should be driving on about three miles of new road by the middle of the year.

JANUARY 11

THE Fiji Government has made keeping money in bank accounts more profitable. From next month, banks may increase the maximum interest rates they pay to people with money in saving and investment accounts and on time deposits.

JANUARY 12

A 23-YEAR-OLD Lautoka farmer under sentence for murder has been waiting for a Fiji Government decision about his fate for more than a month. He was sentenced by the Supreme Court in Lautoka for murder. The death sentence was the first since Fiji’s Parliament restored capital punishment after a five-year trial period.

JANUARY 14

BUTCHERS are blaming rice control for a beef shortage which hit many Suva meat shops on Saturday. Some butchers had exhausted their beef stocks by mid-morning and the proprietors predicted a worse shortage this week. Cattle farmers were refusing to sell cattle unless prices rose.

JANUARY 15

THE Fiji Government has accepted a recommendation by the Coconut Advisory Council for another review of the declining copra industry. The Fiji Coconut Board’s secretary, Mr Tony Moore, said that the review might end in 1974. He said a 1974 finish would be possible if the government could find the right man for the job. This might be difficult.

JANUARY 16

BEEF supplies in Suva worsened yesterday and butcheries are considering restricting their opening hours. One company, Wahleys expected 16 heads of cattle from Tavua but they didn’t arrive. Another company, Leylands, had only two heads to slaughter and has none in stock for today. Both are considering opening their shops later in the day.

JANUARY 17

FIJI wants oil-rich Middle East country, Iran, to consider building a local refinery to help hold down the cost of fuel. The Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, revealed this during a news conference he held in Suva after a Cabinet meeting yesterday. Ratu Sir Kamisese emphasised that the proposal was tentative and he was disclosing it with “great trepidation”.

JANUARY 18

THE ill-fated ship, last radio contact with Suva short after she reported she was drifting in heavy seas, a court inquiry into the ship’s sinking heard in Suva. But Marine Department authorities did not think full search and rescue operations were necessary at that time. Suva’s harbour master, captain Robert Turner, was fully convinced about 8 hours later that the worst had happened to the ship.

JANUARY 19

WORKERS will be able to seek bigger pay rises under the third phase of the Fiji Government’s prices and incomes policy, and dividends and rents will be free from control. The pay increase limit will be 10 per cent or an extra 6 cents per hour, whichever is higher. This means that workers getting 60c an hour or less will be able to claim increases of up to 17.1 per cent.

JANUARY 21

A FORMER Alliance politician, Mr Sakiasi Butadroka, launched an exclusively Fijian political party on Saturday with the aid of villagers who attended a Suva meeting. AT the last general election, Mr Butadroka, won the House of Representatives seat for the Rewa-Serua-Namosi Fijian Communal Constituency on an Alliance ticket. He was made assistant minister for commerce, industry and cooperatives.

JANUARY 22

Many Shell and Mobil service stations in Fiji were out of petrol yesterday because their supplying companies’ stock had run out. British Pe