ABSTRACT
Mauritius is explained at length in the Meade Report. We have attempted to summarise some of the salient facts as they relate to the development of the social services in Chapter 1 of this Report. The national income per head is now declining; unemployment is growing; the increasing casualisation of the sugar industry, which commands the economy, is accentuating a host of social and educational problems; the cost of public assistance has risen tenfold in ten years; the demand for sickness certificates, as a concealed form of unemployment relief, and the growing consumption of proprietary drugs, indiscriminately promoted by the unethical activities of a section of the medical and pharmaceutical professions, are throwing intolerable burdens on the Government Medical Service; and the educational system, which at the primary school level has had to absorb 40,000 more children in the last five years and faces the prospect of an even larger increase in the next five years, is in serious danger of collapsing under the strain of shift-work teaching, obsessional cramming for academic prizes, and the problem of teaching three languages to little children who are often ill-fed and ill-housed. The onslaught of two cyclones in 1960 magnified all these national issues, and presented new bills for reconstruction, the building of new and sturdier houses, and the relief of distress. Confronted as the Government is with all these heavy and competing claims, our proposals for further expenditure on social welfare require justification.
