N.Z. MILITARY STORES

Grey River Argus, 3 August 1940, Page 12

N.Z. MILITARY STORES

Position at Camps

NOT SATISFACTORY.

WELLINGTON, August 1. “The position in the mobilisation camps as regards the accounting for equipment and stores has, I regret to state, been far from satisfactory,” said the Controller and Auditor-Gen-eral (Mr C. G. Collins) in his report on the Public Accounts. “My inspectors are agreed that this is mainly due to the fact that for the performance of the work there is an absence of the required trained personnel.

“It is, of course, readily understandable that the paramount desire of the responsible military officers was to equip the men and provide for them adequately in camp before their departure overseas, and that matters of accounting for equipment and provisions were, by the exigencies of the times, forced into the background,” reports Mr Collins. “The Audit Office has kept the position constantly under the notice of the Treasury and Defence Department, and I am pleased to be able to add that arrangements are in train for an audit officer with long experience in stores work to be seconded to the Defence Department. His temporary duty will be not to engage in an audit; but to ensure that conditions prevail which will permit a satisfactory audit to be later carried out.”

Mr Collins says that in view of the extreme urgency of the work of erecting and equipping mobilisation bases and training camps, the normal procedure for calling for tenders for the carrying out of the work was found by the Public Works Department to be impracticable, and the Minister for Public Works had approved the system to letter contracts, on a “cost plus” basis. “Some little time after the commencement of work on ‘cost plus’ contracts,” Mr

Collins says, “the Public Works Department prepared a standard contract form which was drawn to embody conditions verbally convoyed, to the contractors by the public works engineers. Several groups of contractors declined to sign the contract documents, claiming that the contracts did not coincide with their impressions of the position, and that they did not wish to prejudice their rights to maximum Remuneration. This attitude led to disputes during the settlement of claims, and several of the ‘cost plus’ contracts when settled had to carry a final ‘on cost' considerably in excess of the originally intended 71 per cent. The intervention of audit before payment resulted in substantial savings of public money, and contractors’ claims In reispect of one mobilisation camp alone were, due substantially to audit action, reduced by more than £Booo.’’