WHO ARE CIVIL SERVANTS?

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 213, 6 September 1916, Page 4

WHO ARE CIVIL SERVANTS?

A PECULIAR. POSITION. TECHNICAL AND SECONDARY SCJBOOL TEACHERS. LEGAL FLAW THREATENS BOXUS. A. singular position has arisen in regard to the payment of the Civil ' servants' war bonus to technical and secondary school teachers, and a legal flaw I threatens to deprive this class of public! jeervant from participation in the payment to meet war expenditure, unless special provision is made' to overcome the obstacle. The Appropriation Act provides that payments of the bonus "may be made to any persons employed either permanently or temporarily in the Government service, or in the service of any Education Board, or to persons appointed to any office pursuant to the provisions of any Act, and in receipt of public moneys as remuneration for services in respect ot the duties of such office." The control of many of the technical colleges of the Dominion is vested in the Education BoaTds, and in such cases the instructors and the etaff are curiously in the service of the Education Board. In other cases, however, the technical branch of education is vested in a separate board of governors, elected under regulations, which is generally representative of the Board of Education, the local civic authority, and the labour unions. Apparently the Appropriation Act does not provide for any of these teachers because they are not directly in the employ of the Government or in the eerrice of the Education Board. The same position also applies to the secondary schools, which are similarly governed by separate authority. Thus the position is that the Government can it it wishes, pay the war bonus to technical school teachers employed by Education Boards, as m the case of Auckland—the statutory authority makes the payment optional—but it cannot pay the allowance to other technical school teachers nor to any of the secondary school teachers. Probably to prevent friction, the Department has decided for the present to pay none of the technical echool teachers. The only way out of the difficulty seems to be to get some other special pioviejon, and, with this end in view (the Technical School Teachers'' Association of New Zealand, the Auckland branch of which, along with others, is fully alive to the situation, has already ■made urgent representations to the Gov-