THE "LOST LEGION"

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 63, 11 September 1943, Page 8

THE "LOST LEGION"

CIVIL SERVICE CONTROL

Describing the Civil Service as the "lost legion" of the wage-earning section of the community, .when speaking at Makara last night, Flying Officer C. Drummond, Independent for "Wellington W.est, said that the Independent Group policy definitely, provided State employees with access to the Arbitration Court. "The civil servant is overwhelmed with-a weight of bureaucracy, is governed by a set of cumbersome. and obsolete regulations, and hounded by a system of discipline that would not be tolerated for two minutes by his counter-part in iridus-. try," Flying Officer Drummond declared. . ■"'■'■".,: The Civil Service was seething with dissatisfaction,' and since first attacking the system at an earlier meeting, Flying Officer Drummond said: that lie had been approached by scores of civil servants who had. ■ brought / a variety of injustices to his notice. It was inexplicable that that section of the people that served the people should be hemmed in by control and rules and regulations that dated back to antiquity. . "New■•' departments spring up like mushrooms nowadays,", the speaker continued, "and each carries two. or three executive posts which have become the sole , prerogative of party hacks who are brought in over the heads of civil servants who have given 20 or 30 years of faithful service. I say that it is a poor business that cannot, within reason promote from within, and the record of the Government's control of the Civil Service proves that State employment;has become poor business. The : civil' servant takes second place to the poli-tical-party and committee yelpers. "We plan to make the Civil Service as fairly treated as its counter-part in 'industry," the candidate declared, "and that can be done only by giving all sections of the service the legal right of submitting their problems to arbitration." .