APPOINTMENTS TO THE CIVIL SERVICE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 30, 5 February 1912, Page 8

APPOINTMENTS TO THE CIVIL SERVICE.

TO THE EDITOK. Sir,— Was it a grim sense of humour at the singular inopportunoness of the Hon. T. Mackenzie's statement that a Civil Service Board was unnecessary, which caused you to publish his utterance almost alongside tho notification of the appointment of TQt. James Hislop to, tho vacant UnderSecretarybhip for Internal Affairjt? For, truly, if there is one thing more than another which would justify the creation of Buch a board, it is the intense dissatisfaction in the seryicb which is caused by the frequent appointments of private secroraries to high administrative positions, for which their training in uo wise fits them, over the heads of numbers of more qualified and deserving men. The Civil Service Association has as forcibly as it dared protested against tho continuanco of this crying injustice which tho despotism ol Ministers forces on the service ; and this latost appointment, coming as it does when a change of Government, and probably of methods, appears inevitable, shows how regardless tho Premier ie of tho feelings and the well-being of the Civil Service when the intorests of his friends are at stake. No one will question tho justice of your compliment to Mr. Hislop's cour tosy, but I auk tho question in all fairnoss to Mr. Hislop, would he have received the Under-Secretaryship from a Civil Service Board, or from a new Government which made the appointment on the_ merits of the men whose qualifications entitle them to consideration? ' The Premier deserves all credit for his eftorts to improve the status of civil servants and tho conditions under which they work, but ho has laid himself open, with singular, frequency, to the chargo of allowing tho claims of friendship to ovcrrido his sense of justice where important appointments have boeu concerned— i am, etc., OBSERVER. Wellington, Sth February, 1912.

Pupils are rolling up for the 1912 Technical School sessions. To-day many new scholars were taken on, but n»re are expected when the trams resume running. Evening students begin on Thursday. Tne Director (Mr. Latrobo) is confronted with congestion at tho class-rooms. Plant and instructors are ready for the students, but there is no accommodation for them. Tlie question of more room has now reached the acute stage. Referring to his activities as Mayor of Oamaru thirty years ago, Sir W. J. Steward remarked ,that he had been a strong advocate of the construction of a railway line from Oamaru to Naseby. They had got tho Hiio as far as Tokor f«. but there it had stopped. He still believed that Central Otago would have been better served- from tho Oamaru entrance, and wac cuito convinced that the connection * between Tokorahi and Ranfurly, near Naseby, would yet require to be made. The distance was only some thirty-five miles, and such a railway would enable the people to get to Central Otago and back with a great saving of time and expense. Under present conditions ono had to travel past Oamaru. and right doAui past Dunedin, in order to pick up the Nateby line, which point one cuuld reach via Tokoralu at a saving oi a hundred milos each way. This fact alone would, he said, make the line inevitable. A special meeting of tho Wellington * I JP| Ogra ; phloal Union will be held OB JXednesd&y, at 5.30 p..m.