A/RES/48/51 Page 5 17. Requests the Special Committee to continue the examination of the question of the small Territories and to recommend to the General Assembly the most suitable steps to be taken to enable the populations of those Territories to exercise their right to self-determination and independence, and to report thereon to the Assembly at its forty-ninth session. 75th plenary meeting 10 December 1993 B INDIVIDUAL TERRITORIES I. - American Samoa The General Assembly, Referring to resolution A above, Noting that efforts are currently aimed at increasing the production of food crops for local consumption, Noting also the announcement by the Governor that his administration was planning to lay off over one thousand public employees, including some four hundred permanent career civil servants, Noting further that American Samoa is the only United States of America Territory in which employers are allowed to pay workers less than the mainland minimum wage, Aware that one third of the population is dependent on village-based water systems which often lack basic sanitary conditions, Noting the devastation caused by hurricane Val in December 1991 and the recovery efforts of the territorial Government in conjunction with the administering Power and the international community, Recalling the dispatch in 1981 of a United Nations visiting mission to the Territory, 1. Calls upon the administering Power, in cooperation with relevant regional and international institutions, to assist the Territory in increasing its agricultural output; 2. Also calls upon the administering Power, in cooperation with the territorial Government, to continue to promote the economic and social development of the Territory in order to reduce its heavy economic and financial dependence on the United States of America; 3. Requests additional information from the elected representatives of American Samoa, the administering Power and/or other sources to enable the Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples to determine its future course of action on the question of American Samoa, and in this connection expresses its firm conviction that a visiting mission at this stage would provide an effective means of obtaining information on /...