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HEALTH AND SANITATION. 



HEALTH AND SANITATION ON ESTATES. 



By Db. S. H. R. Lucy, 

 (Senior Health Officer, F.M.S.) 



I N considering the problems connected with sanitation upon 



estates in the Federated Malay States I propose in the first 



instance to speak from the point of view of a sanitarian concerned 



with the opening up of virgin jungle for cultivation and the 



employment thereon of immigrant labour. 



Site for Cooly Likes. 

 Much trouble and expense in the future may be saved by a 

 judicious choice of site for lines, it is within the experience of many 

 of you, for one reason or another, generally the occun'ence of severe 

 malaria, that it has become necessary to abandon certain line sites, 

 much financial loss being thereby entailed, especially when the lines 

 and wells were built of permanent materials. 



In the early days of coffee or rubber planting it was the common 

 practice to choose for a line site the edge of a ravine or swamp, the 

 main factors which determined this choice being the easy access 

 to water, a shallow hole in the ground provided a sufficiency, or the 

 unsuitability of the land for cultivation. 



In the first stages of opening an estate it must often be 

 impossible to fix upon a permanent line site, it is however not 

 usually difficult to find a tempoi*ary site that has no obvious 

 disadvantages, the main points to be considered are accessibility, 

 configuration of the land, and its relative distance from I'avines, 

 swamps, and alienated or unalienated land over which you will be 

 unable to exercise any control. 



Accessibility. 



A central site may be too remote to suit the convenience of your 

 coolies, but it renders more easy the work of your labour gangs and 

 a site which abuts upon a busy road or crowded village may present 

 many objections. 



Within limits there can be no doubt that concentration of your 

 labour is desirable, where there are congregated large numbers 

 of coolies they are healthier and happier than when scattei"ed about 

 the estate in small parties. Concentration facilitates supervision, 

 it used to be considered a danger in the case of an outbreak of 



