PUBLIC TRUST COMMISSION.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXV, Issue 3832, 15 May 1913, Page 5

PUBLIC TRUST COMMISSION.

RESOLUTION BY TRADES COUNCIL. At the Trades Council meeting last night the following resolution was carried ; —“That thus Council directs the attention of the public to the report of the Royal Commission on the Public Trust Office, in the course of which the Commissioners express the deliberate Copinion : (1) ‘That the administration with respect to the methods adopted in making investments and the collec- . Lion of income and revenue therefrom is eminently efficient. The number of well-founded complaints received is exceedingly small in comparison with the number of estates administered or in course of administration, and the variety of factors to bo dealt with.’ (2> ‘That they found that the office system and methods provide with the greatest care for the safeguarding, controlling and scrupulously accounting for any estate placed ill its charge.” (3) ‘That a spirit of hostility has sprung up between the Public Trustee and the legal profession during the past two or three years.’ (4) ‘That they have arisen out of the zeal of the Public Trustee and his agents to attract business to the office without. perhaps, a realisation of tho extent to which suc-h zeal might bring about a reaction.’ (5) ‘We cannot, therefore, too strongly condemn 1 what lias been clearly manifested in Jthe course of our investigations: a tendency to unduly force the growth of business.” The Council affirms that it is tho duty of the Public Trust Office to continuously extend its sphere cif usefulness, even ‘to unduly force, the growth of business’, seeing that the history of the Public Trusty Office has boon one of inestimable value to the public, and the Council urges that the

complaints against the Public Trust Office by the legal profession Tbackcd by the' Royal Commission) is not a sufficient reason for making radical and far-reaching changes in the methods and scope of the business or [ho Public Trust Office.