CIVIL SERVANTS AND POLITICS

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 77, 1 April 1931, Page 10

CIVIL SERVANTS AND POLITICS

(To the Editor.) Sir, —I quite agree with the remarks contained in your editorial article headed "Making the Service Political." As an old officer of the P. and T. Service, I was amazed when I read the "eported remarks of the president of the P. and T. Officers' Association, and his "hasty and ill-con-sidered advice" to the assembled officers at Palmerston North! Times have indeed changed when such language and advice is allowed to pass, apparently unnoticed, by the powers in authority! The presentday officers of the Public Service scum to ignore the rule that they must retrain from taking part in any political movement, or in movements which may interfere with the conduct of the Department to which they belong, and yet we frequently see resolutions passed by assembled officers of the various branches of the Public Service, criticising the actions of their superior officers, and the j niembers of the Government, and conveying veiled threats if their liberty of action is interfered with. If some of the remarks which we read of were made in the presence of a private employer, the offending person would either receive a very severe reprimand, or treated with instant dismissal! I don't know what the Public Service is coming to, and it is time something like the "closure" should be applied to some of those irresponsible individuals who now think they are at liberty to say, and do, what they like, and are bringing the whole service into discredit. I am not surprised at the action of many of the controlling officers of the P. and T. forming a guild of their own, as evidently they do not wish to associate themselves with the "Red Fed" ideas of certain officials. —I am, etc., OLD P. AND T. OFFICER.