The Wairarapa Daily. SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 1887. CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2552, 19 March 1887, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 1887. CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.

Wfe learn .from the Evening Post that the -Government have reformed the Civil Service by a simple but effective circular, This document is said to provide that in case of vacancies occurring the offices are to be filled up at a less rate of salary, so as. to gradually reduce the cost of the service, According to the salary attaching to the vacant office, a certain per centage is to be taken off in the case of officers promoted to it, or when practicable, instead of promotions, amalgamations are to be made, and in all cases the filling of such vacancies is to come before the Cabinet. This is understood to mean that in certain cases promotion will mean reduction of salary, and that its intention is to indicate that in future £6OO a year is to be the maximum salary for heads of departments. We presume the expectation of civil service life, if the civil servants are not goaded to commit suicide by ministerial circulars, is about twenty years and that the reform now iniated will only be consumated during the next century. By that time, no doubt, we shall be able to discover its advantages, which at the present appear to us to ' be somewhat vague, The leading idea seems to be to reduce the salary of each officer by about twenty-fivo per cent as opportunity offers, bo that £6OO. will be the maximum income of heads of departments. It may be pointed, out that all business experience tends to prove that high salaries to heads of departments are more economical than low ones. A £I2OO a year man, for example, at the head of the railway department would be cheaper to the colony than a £6OO a year officer. Giving ministers of the Crown, big salaries may not be anjeconomy, becausethe best politicians in the colony are not to be bought 'by money, but the best civil servants have a distinct money value, and to secure them we must pay the .market price for the article,. If the Government are of the opinion that the colony is now paying twenty-five, pei'oent too much for its civil service work, it ought . to cut down the expenditure at once -by that amount, and not spread '. the operation over a score of years.; The new project of the Government appears calculated to irritate the civil service without materially decreasing its cost. If any real economies can be effected, tbey will have to be brought about through the instrumentality: of. the very heads of departments round whose necks the: Government have loosely placed a bow string. - The whole thing appears to be a blunder. . On the eve of a general election a change should

not be brought into operation which is' unlikely to be favored by either the I civil service or the public. - • i