The Akaroa Mail. FRIDAY, JUNE 25.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 406, 25 June 1880, Page 2

The Akaroa Mail. FRIDAY, JUNE 25.

Thk report of the Civil Bervice jQommie" sion is now before the House and the country. At tlte time this and the other Convmisskms were appointed, ! it was generally believed tty'efc the Government merely Intended to shirk a certain amount of responsibility, and provide a pleasant trip round the Colony, with all expenses paid for a .number of political friends. If such were their intention, how wofully disappointed must they be with the manner in which this Commission, at any rate, have acted. The Commissioners appear to have committed the fearful blunder of being really in earnest, and of supposing their employers to be so too. The Government must feel like the man in the fable, who, having used his creative power in calling into existence a monster, found himself unable to destroy it or control its movements.

The Commissioners commence their report by a statement of the result of their enquiries into the working of the Railway Lepartment. Now, if there is one branch of tins service in which, more than another, tvs economical and businesslike administration have been expected, it is this one, and this for various reasons. First, the department is a new one, oiid be supposed to be free from lite red t:ipe traditions of othe branch; s -d the service ; then i\ larg 1 * c

number of its employees are not considered to belong to "the..Civil Service, and the ridiculous fiction does not apply to them, that once in the Government's employ a man is to consider himself provided for for life, fit or unfit, industrious*or lazy, if only he stops' short of stealing spoons. And again, the railways are strictly a business undertaking, and it ought to be the endeavour of the Minister in charge of them, and his higher subordinates, to work them at the minimum of cost consistent with a maximum of public convenience.

But in spite of these not unreasonable expectations, what do we find from the report of the Commissioners to be the case? Red tape in its most offensive and objectionable form has penetrated and permeated the Department. paid billets have been created, irrespective of necessity, and men have been pitchforked into them without reference to fitness. Incredible and highly-culpable carelessness appear to exist in looking after the valuable property in charge of the Department. ■ We quote a few instances among many :— ' ' ' ' ' "At Dunedin, they found an officer receiving £600-a year, called locomotive engineer, who informed the Commissioners that his business was to inspect the working engines and discover whether they required repair, fur which duty an officer was employed. This engineer, who admits he had no practical experience of locomotives previous to his appointment, s paid £600 a year to go into the locomotive shop when an engine is found to need repair and instruct the long experienced locomotive foreman what to do with it. In Nelson they found a gentleman in receipt of £400 as manager of the railways, there being Jess than twenty milee, on which only two trains were daily running, while neither the inspector of permanent way nor the engineer, engaged in a rootless workshop, appear to take or require any orders from him. In the same place they found a railway storekeeper receiving £160, who laid no stores and no office. They believe that the supposed duties of both these gentlemen could bo advantageously added to the exceedingly small demands made on the energies of the Nelson stationmaster, who should be a man of sufficient intelligence and experience to be trusted with the general control of that short line with its very small amount of traffic. At Kaipara there was a railway of sixteen miles, and it had an assistant manager receiving £300 for duties that ought to be performed by a chief station-master. Neither receipts nor traffic justified the outlay.

"In February, 1879, a traffic manager of great experience in India and Australia was appointed; textile charge of the traffic of the Auckland line, with inducements of an increased salary if he reduced the working expenses from 94 per cent of the gross receipts to below 70. While he continued in that position the expenses were reduced to 68 per cent., and that certainly without any friendly aid from hia superior officer, the Auckland general manager. The loud complaints previously made by the Auckland public were silenced, and his conduct seems to have been satisfactory; but in consequence of the language and actions of lug superior officer, this officer was compelled to resign. His resignation was accepted, but though the general manager was censured for his action, his services were retained, while a too successful traffic manager was lost to the service and the public complaints again revived—so little encouragement doesfhe service offer to meritorious or even successful officers, and so easy is it made to drive away any dangerous rival."

Further oh we learn that—

"The Commissioners find that the South Island Commissioner has capital invested in a firm contracting with the department of which he is the head, and his receipts from this capital depend on the success of the firm. Such a fact can hardly fail to influence the action of officers serving under the Commissioner, and destroy the confidence of the firms tendering for railway supplies. It is impossible to estimate the loss the colony may have suffered from this obviously fnlse position held by the working head of the principal railways—a position which should not be permitted under any circumstances."'

The Commissioners stat? that they have not been able to make anything more than a superficial investigation of niost of the Departments. Regarding the Judicial Department, the Commis.sioners say:—" We have baen able to fi»d thiittjiedepj.rtment is unnecessarily costly, and that appointments hav-e been made to it for considerations other than those of capacity and fitness. ,. And as examples of the enormous cost of small gaols they instance the following:-—

, "In Auowtown, where they seem to have a prisoner two days a month, the cost of waiting on him is at the rate of £2837 Ids per annum; Westport, £645 7s 6d per head ; Ruesell. £465 7s 6d ; Naseby, £317 17s 4d ; Thames, £180 10s 10d ; Reefton, £152 Is 8d ; Clyde, £116 2s 2d ; and Greymouth, £113 10s Id."

That Arrowtown prisoner, doing his two days a month, and costing nearly £120 a day to wait on him is certainiy a luxury which we might possibly dispense with.

In summarizing their recommendations, the Commissioners say :—

" The first step towards economy must be the abandonment of all ideas and traditions that now exist as to the Government being required to treat ital employees on the different principles from those which would regulate a well-conducted establishment of any large employer; and chiefly that men should be sought for the work required, and not places sought for the men who liave been trained to expect them. By far the greater part of the work demanded from the oflicers and clerks employed in the Government service is o£ a routine character, requiring no uncommon ability, and the Government ought to obtain men qualified for such work at their market value. The prevalent idea if not the recognised rule, that every person who is called into the Government service has obtained a footing from which he cannot be removed, and which must necessarily lead him up to constant, regular promotion with very little regard to his own assiduity anl efficiency, and none whatever to the character of the duties upon which he is

engaged or which he has qualified himselE to perfoitir, fias not only removed one of the strongest incentives lo effort which lead men to aspire to excellence, but has: indefinitely and progressively increased the cost of Government."

There is a naivete about this and many other of the recommendations in the report, arid some of the statements are made with the air of their being grand discoveries which would almost load us to suspect at times, that the Coni'mis- j sioners are "poking -fun'" at us. It is ? however, conceivable that these gentle-' men are so utterly ignorant of all the first principles on which the Civil Service is organized- as to imagine that there exists ]a "|iof siplity 'of >ecommehdations involving - siicn '■ radical changes being paid the slightest attention to. It may be that many of the outside public are under the same delusion with the Commissioners, and think that some regard, at least is paid to personal fitness iivthe. selection of public servants. But , any. one who has been behind the scenes knows that any such idea is utterly at variance with the real state of the case,. All acquainted with the service know that if any large employer, Banking, .or Manufacturing firm, : conducted .bttsmess in a similar manner to .the inevitable bankruptcy * would, be the result. The fiction been so petsistently put forward that it has come to be accepted as axiomatic, that anyone who has once crept into Government employ has a right to a maintenance for and during the term of his natural life, and that a somewhat similar privilege attaches to his sisters,, his. cousins, and his »ants is alone .sufficient to render any reform hopeless as .long ac it is allowed an inch of standing room; The equally absurd custom of- allowing employees to expect thafy %&hqut any increase in the value or, am©uafc©f• their work, their remuneration is i&o. be x>n a constantly increasing scale-rentiers the expenses of departments constantly increasing without any increase: of inefficiency, and tends to promote: sloth a a dull mediocrity among the •::< .'iv.il Servants thsmselves. We remember a case in point. A youth entered the sei vice as a cadet at £80 a year.-.;:. . The department to which he was attached grew rapidly, and our friend rose r as. Artemus Ward would say, "'gradooally and majestically," till in five years he was in receipt of £250 per annum. If this increase O'pay had acccmpan'td increased responsibility and more important duties it would have shown ability in the young man and the public service might still have received full value for its money. But, incredible-as it may appear to outsiders, the officer at £250 was employed on precisely the same clerical and routine work as the boy at £80 ! Such case's might be multiplied ad infinitum. We : have seen men in the receipt of salaries equivalent to 15 s a.jclay- busily employed —addressing envelopes. «■.>;•-:•.•

But the subject is too vasfcio be dealt, with in a single article, w Suffice it to say that the public hare.now a magnificent opportunity to insist on refcrm being carried out in the direction p )inted out by the Commission. It is not a question of party politics. No Government will ever undertake the work unless driven to it by pressure from without, and any Government undertaking it will raise such a storm of interested opposition as to require all the support of those chiefly interested— viz., the taxpayers at large. *V'e have not heard the laet of this report, and shall return to it again.