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Bahamas has altered some of the assumptions on which our
planning for the Caribbean has been based. I am about to
visit the area and on my return I shall set in hand a
review of our policy there.
12.
The other dependencies
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For these we must accept for some long time to come
that we shall be wholly responsible. Their poverty of
natural resources makes them wholly and pathetically
dependent upon us for any further advance to civilised
standards of living, let alone prosperity. In all but a
very few, there are serious over-population problems. Our total aid (budgetary development) for the territories listed in paragraph 9 is running at about £ 4 million a year in
1967/68. For one or two of the smallest, the answer may
indeed be evacuation. In others, it may be necessary to
try to organise mass emigration to territories with better
prospects, though this will give rise to considerable
problems. At the same time, all of them need skills and
expertise which they cannot find from their own resources.
We shall have to send them bright people with initiative
and imagination to make the most of any possibilities for
both economic and social advancement. This raises the
urgent question of staffing.
13. Staff
We are faced with a serious rundown of staff,
particularly in the Western Pacific. The smaller colonies
have never been able to provide adequate career structures
themselves for their staff and, in the past, careers have
been provided by transfers to and from the larger
territories. As these have achieved independence, this
reservoir has dried up. In the Western Pacific the remaining
pensionable staff are melting away and the contract
officers who are being recruited to replace them seldom
return for a second tour; but local people with the
training and qualifications required have not yet begun to
come forward in any numbers.
And this is happening at a
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/time