Annual report on the Falkland Islands and Dependencies / Colonial Office.

  • Great Britain. Colonial Office.
Date:
[1961]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report on the Falkland Islands and Dependencies / Colonial Office. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    7/88 (page 1)
    The Colony PART I General Review of 1960 and 1961 The Legislative Council was dissolved on 2nd January 1960, and elections were held in the following March. The first meeting of the new Council took place in April 1960. In his opening address to that meeting the Governor, Sir Edwin Arrowsmith, K.C.M.G., gave a brief review of the principal events and developments that occurred during the four years in which the old Council held office and then, turning to the future, he listed the main problems of the Colony, including continued emigration from the Colony, the need for improved educational facilities, the need to carry out and intensify research and experimental work in ways and means of improving the pastures, the maintenance of essential services and the recruiting of staff to man them, and, perhaps the most important of all, the adverse budgetary position. Three important projects, mentioned in the last Biennial Report, were successfully concluded during 1960. First there was the topo¬ graphical survey of the Colony, which began with the aerial survey in 1957 by Hunting Aerosurveys Ltd. under a Colonial Development and Welfare contract, followed shortly after by the requisite ground survey by surveyors of the Directorate of Overseas Surveys. The field work was completed in June 1960, after some 55 surveyor months. The new maps of the Colony are now in the course of publication and the first of the series have already arrived in the Islands. Then there were two public health projects—the polio immunisation campaign and the ophthalmic survey. Practically everyone under the age of 21 years has now been immunised against polio and all those within the age groups susceptible to polio are offered the opportunity of being inoculated. The ophthalmic surgeon was in the Falklands for eight months and he saw almost 1,400 patients and performed 60 operations. These figures illustrate the magnitude and importance of this very successful survey. Work on re-surfacing the roads in and around Stanley in tar macadam progressed satisfactorily during the period under review until September 1961, when it was halted by the destruction of the