APPENDIX A A THE MINISTRY OF OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT s much of the work of the Ministry of Overseas Development is connected with the Commonwealth, it has been thought useful to include information about the Ministry and its associated bodies and committees in the Year Book. The Ministry came into being in October 1964. Its central purpose is to formulate and carry out British policies for helping the developing countries to raise their living standards. In doing this the Ministry works in harmony with the policies of the overseas departments and other departments concerned. When the Ministry was set up it absorbed the Department of Technical Cooperation and took over relevant sections of work from the Foreign Office, the Commonwealth Relations Office, the Colonial Office and the Treasury. The Ministry is responsible for: the British economic aid programme as a whole and its detailed composition; the terms and conditions of aid; the size and nature of the programme for each country; the management of financial aid and technical assistance; relations with international aid organisations; the British interest in United Nations programmes of technical assistance; and relations with voluntary bodies concerned with aid and development. The only exceptions to this are that in relation to dependent territories the Foreign and Commonwealth Office remains responsible, in consultation with the Ministry, for budgetary aid, while the Ministry, in discharging its responsibility for development aid, acts in agreement with that office. The Ministry is not responsible for military aid, which remains under the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. On the administrative side the Ministry is organised into a number of Divisions headed by Under-Secretaries. Of these one deals with general aid policy and finance; another with British relations with the international bodies handling aid and development, and with other aid-giving countries. Others deal with Asia, Africa and the Caribbean and Latin America. The Geographical Departments which form part of these Divisions are responsible for the capital aid and technical assistance programmes to the countries within these regions and for dealing through British diplomatic posts with the governments concerned regarding these programmes. Other Divisions deal with technical assistance and are responsible with the Ministry's professional advisers for organising the resources of Britain to provide this form of aid and for contacts with the many organisations in Britain outside as well as inside the Government which contribute to this. The subjects dealt with include agriculture and other natural resources; science and technology; schools and teacher training, social education; universities and technical education; recruitment for service overseas and the terms and conditions of service of personnel serving abroad; the organisation of training in Britain; voluntary organisations and the young volunteers programme; assistance in the medical field and population control; and Britain's relations with UNESCO and FAO. Outside the divisional organisation are the Information Department and the Special Projects Directorate, which is mainly concerned with the engagement of consultants for feasibility studies and other assignments. The Economic Planning Staff is responsible for the Ministry's work in the economic and statistical fields, including the provision of advice, personnel and training where requested by overseas governments. It is divided into three Divisions. Each of the economists in the Geographical Division is responsible for studying the economic problems of a group of recipient countries as a basis for the working out of aid programmes that will best contribute to their economic development. The International Economics Division takes part, from the economic point of view, in the formulation of general aid policies, and undertakes research into economic trends which affect the rate of progress of the developing countries. Both Divisions work closely with the operational departments concerned. The Statistics Division provides statistical services for the Ministry, including compilation of statistics of aid. The Ministry has a staff of professional advisers on technical subjects and is also advised by members of organisations partly or wholly financed from the Ministry's funds. Subjects covered include education, medicine, a wide range in the field of natural resources (including agriculture and geology), engineering, building, social development and a number of others. When engineering advice of a specialist nature is required, which falls outside the fields of its own Advisory staff, such as telecommunications, the Ministry is able to call on the experience of the Crown Agents for Oversea Governments and Administrations. Various organisations engaged in the provision of technical assistance are attached to the Ministry; they are the Directorate of Overseas Surveys, the Anti-Locust Research Centre, the Tropical Products Institute, the Tropical Pesticides Research Unit and the Tropical Pesticides Research Headquarters and Information Unit. ADDENDUM At the time of going to press, October 1970, it has been decided that the work of the Ministry of Overseas Development shall in future be carried out by a functional wing of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to be known as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Overseas Development Administration) (FCO (ODA)). A draft Order in Council formally dissolving the Ministry of Overseas Development and transferring its functions to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will accordingly be laid before Parliament and will come into force subject to affirmative resolution. APPENDIX B 773 P THE COMMONWEALTH TELEPHONE CABLE PARTNERSHIP RIOR to 1956, intra-Commonwealth telecommunications had been carried either by telegraph cable or by radio. However, by 1956 the British Post Office had solved the technical problems of using multi-channel submarine telephone cables to carry conversations over long distances and had come to an agreement with the Canadian Overseas Telecommunication Corporation to lay a 60-channel cable between Britain and Canada. It thus became necessary to consider whether this Anglo-Canadian telephone cable (later named CANTAT) should form part of the existing Commonwealth telecommunications system and whether additional intra-Commonwealth telephone cables should be laid. These questions were considered by a Commonwealth Telecommunications Conference held in London in July 1958; and it was recommended to Governments that a Commonwealth round-the-world telephone cable should be laid, section by section, Commonwealth Governments arranging between themselves to construct and finance particular sections as the need arose. The Conference was not able to recommend that these new telephone cables should be brought within the existing Commonwealth Telecommunications Partnership (q.v.) but proposed that they should be kept separate and should be operated under separate financial arrangements. These recommendations were endorsed by the Commonwealth Trade and Economic Conference held in Montreal in 1958 and were accepted by Commonwealth Governments. As a result of the recommendations of the Conference, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand agreed to lay and jointly finance a telephone cable across the Pacific from Canada to Australia via Fiji and New Zealand, to be called COMPAC, and set up a Management Committee, consisting of one representative of each Partner, to construct and operate it. Later, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia agreed to extend this cable to New Guinea, Hong Kong, Jesselton and Singapore, to be called SEACOM, and set up a similar Management Committee for the purpose. The CANTAT cable was opened in 1961, COMPAC in 1964 and SEACOM in 1967. In 1966 the two Management Committees were combined to form a single Committee which is now responsible for the commercial operation of the whole cable from Britain to Canada, from Canada to Australia and from Australia to Singapore. This Committee consists of representatives from the telecommunications authorities of Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore, and meets from time to time in various Commonwealth countries. The departure of South Africa from the Commonwealth and the advent of telecommunications by earth satellites make it now improbable that a round-theworld telephone cable will be completed. APPENDIX C COMMONWEALTH TELECOMMUNICATIONS PARTNERSHIP HEN telegraph cables linking what are now Commonwealth countries first came to be laid they were laid by cable companies as commercial ventures and Governments were not directly concerned. However, because the cable companies were unwilling to meet the expense of laying a cable across the Pacific from Canada to Australia, the Governments of Britain, Canada, New Zealand and some of the Australian States, largely as a result of the advocacy over many years of Sandford Fleming of the Canadian Pacific Railways, agreed to subscribe money for a Pacific Telegraph Cable and set up in 1901 a representative Pacific Cable Board to construct and manage the cable, which was laid in 1902. In 1927 on the recommendation of an Imperial Wireless and Cable Conference, the various cable and wireless interests which then served the Commonwealth, including the Pacific Cable Board, were merged and a single operating Company later to be known as Cable and Wireless Ltd was set up. A representative Imperial Communications Advisory Committee was established to lay down the policy which should be followed by the Company. In 1945 a Commonwealth Telecommunications Conference recommended that the assets of Cable and Wireless Ltd in the various Commonwealth countries should be nationalised and in 1948 a Commonwealth Telegraphs Agreement was drawn up to promote and co-ordinate the telecommunications services of the Commonwealth. Under the agreement, which was signed by the Governments of Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India and Southern Rhodesia, the partner Governments agreed to operate their external telecommunications co-operatively with the advice of a Commonwealth Telecommunications Board (q.v.) in London, on which each was to be represented. In addition, a 'wayleave scheme' was eventually adopted under which, instead of accounting each to the other for each message sent and received, each Partner keeps its own revenue and is responsible for the same percentage of the total costs of the whole system as its revenue forms of total revenue. This agreement was somewhat modified by a second Commonwealth Telegraphs Agreement signed in 1963. On the recommendation of a further Commonwealth Telecommunications Conference held in 1965 and 1966 the partnership was re-constituted and the Commonwealth Telecommunications Board was replaced by a Commonwealth Telecommunications Council which, unlike the Board, consists of serving telecommunications officials in the countries of the various parties, meeting annually and carrying out their business between meetings by correspondence. This Council is served by a Commonwealth Telecommunications Bureau, which is situated in London under a General Secretary responsible to the Chairman of the Council. The Bureau has the legal capacity of a body corporate. The Commonwealth Telecommunications Board was dissolved in March 1969 by an Order-in-Council made under the Commonwealth Telecommunications Act 1968. The Commonwealth Telegraphs Agreement was at the same time terminated and a new financial agreement between the Partner Governments in respect of the wayleave scheme, the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation Financial Agreement, 1969, became operative. The present partnership, which is concerned only with telegraph cables and radio links, consists of the Governments of Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Ceylon, Ghana, Malaysia, Nigeria, Cyprus, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, The Gambia, Singapore, Guyana, Botswana and Barbados. APPENDIX D COMMONWEALTH TELECOMMUNICATIONS BUREAU General Secretary: S. N. Kalra Chief of Systems Division: C. A. R. Anketell Chief of Finance: D. Clarke Chief of Administration: C. A. G. Coleridge, OBE The Commonwealth Telecommunications Bureau is the Secretariat of the new Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation which replaced the Commonwealth Telecommunications Board* on 1st April 1969. This organisation, which comprises periodical Commonwealth Telecommunications Conferences, a Commonwealth Telecommunications Council meeting at least once a year and the Commonwealth Telecommunications Bureau, was set up by Commonwealth Governments following the recommendations of a Commonwealth Telecommunications Conference in 1966. The Constitution of the new Organisation was published in March 1968 as a White Paper (Command 3547). The Bureau was incorporated in Britain on 8th May 1968 by the Commonwealth Telecommunications Act, 1968. The functions of the Bureau are to collect, maintain and disseminate such information and data as the Council may determine; to process material for conferences and meetings of the Council; to perform the accounting and clearing house functions of the organisation; to maintain and distribute regulations as determined by the Council; and to perform such other duties as the Council may direct. • See p. 774 BB |