The Wairarapa Daily. SATURDAY, JANUARY 21, 1888. The Civil Service Conundrum.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2804, 21 January 1888, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. SATURDAY, JANUARY 21, 1888. The Civil Service Conundrum.

There is a general impression that New Zealand pays too much for its Civil Service, and that Civil Servants, taken' in the aggregate, to be retrenched, but when we take them in detail we are apt to find each of these long-suffering individuals a little overworked and a little under-paid. How is this inconsistency to be reconciled ? Is it not in vain for the Government to harass the denizens of the big wooden building with red tape regulations for compelling them to do more work for less money if they are de facto under-paid and overworked ? The solution of the problem must be sought in another way, and • as straws show the way the wind blows so trifles light as air will indicate the weak points of the Civil Service system. We have heard it said that if the Government buy a broom of say the value of lialf-a-crown, the article does not cost them two shillings and sixpence but somewhere about four times that amount. There is a circumlocution system in connection with the Civil Service which is fatal to all real economy. We will take the broom we have already referred to as an example. Say a Government officer at Mangamahoe, or at Ballance town, wants a broom. He does not, as ordinary individuals do, go to a store and buy it. TJje acquisition of a simple article of utility of this description is only obtained after many days and after some twelve separate and distinct regulation processes have been fulfilled by some dozen or more departmental officers. First there is a formal requisition to the head office for a broom. Second comes the response to the requisition in which the department, after due deliberation, sanctions the expenditure of half-a-crown on the required broom. The third step towards the attainment of the broom is the issue qf what is known as a contingency voucher. The fourth operation consists in having this contingency voucher certified to by a proper officer, and the fifth the scheduling of the voucher. The next and sixth point in the game is fchp submission .of the contengency voucher to the audit officer for a pre-audit. Having, passed this stage the broom almost appears in sight for seventhly a cheque is issued from the Treasury for £0 2s Gd in favor of the individual who fe understood to be selling the broom. The eighth movement is a letter to the applicant for the broom, telling him that the afiajr has been properly arranged, and that Jiis broom was really to be procured. The jjinth document essential to the due completion of the momentous supply is a warrant to the Bank to pay the half crown. The tenth the countersigning of a cheque, and the talcing of a receipt from the veniLoj.', The eleventh, the triumphant return of the voucher duly sealed and signed to the Pay-master-General, and the twelfth and closing ceremony is the post audit by which the half crown expended is finally disposed of, jiij? e under-,

stand ia the system upon which t]ie Government conduct their business. If any private indivinual ventured to 1 adopt.it he would go straight to perdition, he would be eat out of house and home by clerical expenses before he realised where he was. When we contemplate this broom wo feel that we are on the threshold, of 1 the civil service mystery, and that it giighfc be possible for even a man of Major Atkinson's ability to solve it. Ii the Premier could arrange for the future that a half crown broom would only cost the country three shillings or three shillings and sixpence instead of the ten shillings now expended upon it in raw material, clerical labor and printing, he would save the country and reform the service. ;