The Wairarapa Daily. SATURDAY, JANUARY 28, 1888. A Civil Service Weakness.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2809, 28 January 1888, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. SATURDAY, JANUARY 28, 1888. A Civil Service Weakness.

One of the weak points in the New Zealand Civil Service is its tendency to be eternally auditing accounts. One section of the Service is always auditing another section of it, and the audit mania runs into a sort of chronic disease which permeates all branches of the Service, A Civil servant, as a rule, is always .auditing, 1 or being audited, or preparing for auditing, If by some magic touch the work, of auditing could be suspended for a twelvemonth, the Civil Service would collapse for want of employment, Colonial auditors are ever going about like roaring lions seeking whom they may devour. Some score of them are usually on the warpath, travelling from place to place, treading on one another's heels and costing the colony a pretty penny, A colonial auditor may only cost the colony three or four hundred a year, but his travelling expenses usually amount to as much more, and the votes for auditing are generally a substantial amount, The weak point of the system is that half a dozen auditors could do all the audit work of the colony just as well as twenty if this branch of the public servico were reformed, The Controller - General turns out one batch of auditors, the Post and Telegraph departments a second batch, and the Eailway department a third, and there are, we believe, special officers for auditing local bodies and public works accounts, when one batch might be made to serve all departments. For example, a country stationmaster frequently combines with his railway responsibilities the duties of postmaster and telegraphist. One week a representative of the ControllerGeneral may wait upon him, and nudit him from the crown of his head to the solo of his foot, and the next week an emissary of tlio railway department may come down upon him like a thousand of bricks and audit him again from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, Then, before the unfortunate stationmaster can get his breath, the auditor of stamps and telegrams appears on the scene, and once more puts him through his facings. In this way duplicate and triplicate audits are frequently made, which are wholly superfluous and which are altogether n waste of official energy and public money. We should have thought the Controller-General would have been able to do all the auditing required by all the departments of tho public service, Some twenty-odd years ago an audit department was created and a somewhat dangerous debater in the Assembly put at its head. The House of Representatives lost one of its ablest members an 1 the colony gained for a purely financial and arithmetical department the services not of an accountant, but of a distinguished orator. Looking back at the growth of the Civil Service tree in the past, it is easy to see bow it has happened that it now takes so many men to do so little, and how it is that very many members of the service are under-paid and overworked.