THE SURVEY DEPARTMENT.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 8148, 28 April 1885, Page 3

THE SURVEY DEPARTMENT.

Sir, —The extravagant cost and general mismanagement of the Survey Department have been the subject of comment of late, and although I do not endorse all that has been said there is very much truth contained in the statements. The enormous growth and consequent expense of the department dates from the abolition of tho provinces in 1876 (at which time we received many other blessings (?) of a similar nature), when the general system of survey inaugurated by the late Surveyor-General, Mr Thomson, was adopted and put in force throughout the colony. Since then the department has year by year been increasing in numbers and lost, until now it has reached such dimensions as would fairly astonish those who are ignorant of the numbers employed. The present Surveyor-General has adhered strictly to the system of his predecessor, and under him the management has been most extravagant, and by insisting on a minimum of error in section surveys in rough country the cost has been greatly increased where less accurate work would have been quite sufficient for all practical purposes. In the estimates for 1884-85 the total cost of the Survey Department —and this mußt not be confounded with the Crown lands, which is quite distinct—is pnt down at the enormous sum of £111,752, out. of which salaries amount to £56,342. Surveyor-General, £900; assistant do, £700; office surveyor, £600; several chief surveyors, £600 and. £500 each; lithographic printers, £1462 (I will refer to these further on) ; and there is a small army of 27 cadets, whose salaries amount to £1740. The total number of officers employed is 260. If the Government wish to reduce tne department to a reasonable cost let them take £100 each off the salaries of those highest in the service (including the Surveyor-General), sweep away the whole lot of cadets —who never ought to have been appointed —and weed out the most useless and least efficient of the junior officers, instead of indiscriminately dispensing with some of their oldest and most experienced servants. This would bo fairer, and would result in the work being more quickly performed and in a better manner. The employment of cadets is entirely wrong —unfair to those in the service who had qualified themselves for employment, unfair to private surveyors by unnecessarily overcrowding the profsssion, and unfair to the public by training a large number of youths at the public expense, for it'must be remembered that as soon aH they enter the department they receive a salary of £50 for the first year, £60 for the second, and £70 for the third ; at the end of which time, if they pass the usual examination, the surveyor with whom they have been placed during the out-door part of their apprenticeship receives a bonus of £50 from the Government, and they are then usually appointed assistant surveyors afc a salary of £150 to commence with, and the usual field allowances. Anyone who is at all curious in the matter, by looking over the Government Gazettes for the past five or six years will find them teeming with such appointments. It will thus be seen that the cost of teaching a single cadet is £230, and will the Surveyor-General venture to assert that the value of the work performed by a cadet amounts to anything near that sum? I can confidently say that it does not, and in some cases not only are the cadets of very little use during the time they are in the office (from a year to eighteen months), but often they are a positive hindrance, as competent draftsmen have to lose much valuable timo in examining and correcting their work. A cadet to be qualified for entry into the Survey Department is supposed to have a fair knowledge and taste for drawing, but this is a matter which appears to be often overlooked in making the appointments, and the result is a number of very indifferent draftsmen, who might have distinguished themselves better as shoemakers, tailors, or shopmen. Now, although the Government are making a groat show of reducing the Survey Department, at least five new appointments have been gazetted since the beginniDg of last year (when the reductions

were first proposed); one — a cadet -no later than the 19th of last month, and, unless I am very much misinformed, another youth is soon to receive an appointment in the Napier office. And so the farce goes on, and I suppose will go on as long as the present Surveyor-Gene-ral remains in office. He should be replaced by someone of more economic and practical views suited to the nature of the country.

I With regard to the opinion that has been expressed as to the superior results of contract survey work with that executed by the staff, I cannot altogether agree with that view, but from a long experience I am convinced that the work executed by the staff surveyors is preferable. In some cases it may cost a little more, but it is far more reliable, and gives infinitely less trouble to the office staff in checking. Contract surveyors, unless they are particularly conscientious, will try to get the best of the Government, and generally succeed in doing so by scamping some part of the work whero they see a chance, and although the price at which the work is takon may be low, it ofter proves qnito the reverse in the end, owing to the amount of work find trouble thrown on the office staff in chocking and correcting, besides causing groat delay through portions of the work having again to be gone over on the ground. There are instances in the Napier office where contracts have thus been delayed a year or even more beyond the time they should have been completed, and plans sent in so disgracefully done that new ones had to be made by the office draftsmen for which no reduction was made from the contract. But even, if it were found that contract work was satisfactory, still inspecting surveyors would have to be kepi; to check and prove the work, as well as for the numberless small surveys, laying out of roads, &c, which it would be decidedly inconvenient to arrange for by contract,

Regarding the offico staff it has been rightly said that them is much to be complained of, but it is through the Government employing incompetent hands that things do not work smoothly — men who have mistaken their vocation altogether, who are not draftsmen, and never will be, who take a long time producing very inferior work. If the department, before employing a draftsman, compelled him to produce a test plan under the supervision of the chief draftsman (as is done in some other colonies) it would result in a better class of men being employed, and in the work being far better performed. The Government might have to pay a little higher salaries, but a saving would be effected in the cad. With the cheap article there is usually a corresponding amount of nastinesa, and in this matter there is no exception to the rule. Not long since I had an opportunity of inspecting some work done by one of the juniors. It was work which in the ordinary course special care should have been taken to avoid mistakes and errors, but not only was the execution such as a schoolboy might well be ashamed of, but the blunders and errors were so numerous as to be a matter of surprise how they could possibly have occurred. And this is but a single specimen of work produced by some of the so-called draftsmen ! Not long since the Government took it into their heads to dispense with the services of the best draftsman in the Napier office, under pretence of reducing the department, because he applied for leave of absence on account of ill-health, which leave it did not suit them to grant. This officer had held the position of chief draftsmen for 15 years, and apart from his steady industry and ability, his knowledge of tho transactions of the department gained during such a long service was of value to the Government, and certainly entitled him to better consideration. But in order to effect a present paltry saving his having applied for a lengthy leave of absence was seized upon as an excuse for his dismissal. I now hear on good authority that the office staff is shortly to be increased by one, if not two, young surveyors being brought in from the field, and if this proves to be the case it will be nothing short of disgraceful. With reference to the alleged delay in passing land transfer plans through the office I can scarcely agree that the allegation is well grounded — at least so far as the Napier office is concerned — and it is hardly right to hint that the officers employed in checking them might be induced to take a bribe to work overtime in order to pass some particular plan through quickly. Ido not believe such a thing is done, but that all receive equal attention in due order as they are received, or as thoir importance requires, but where any great delay occurs it is usually caused through errors or omissions found in the plan, which has to be returned (in some cases mor9 than once) to the surveyor for correction. In the Napier office nearly the whole of the time of one officer has to be devoted to this branch of the work in order to keep pace with it at all. It has been said that lithographic plans are got out greatly in excess of requirements. There is not the slightest doubt of it. There are many hundreds of lithograph maps lying in the Napier Survey Office which never will be sold or required, all of which have cost a considerable sum of money in their preparation and production. If the Government have only half-a-dozen sections of land for sale in some place they must go to the expense of preparing elaborate lithograph maps, and of distributing them throughout the colony. This perhaps takes up the time of a draftsman for a week or two in getting a tracing ready for the printer, and in some cases several weeks are spent in merely preparing a tracing showing the sections for sale in a certain block or district, for the purpose of photographing to the stone for printing. Many almost useless maps are produced, and in fact it seems as though the Surveyor-General often racked his brains to find some work for the lithographic printers to do. The lithographic branch of the Survey Department is a most expensive one, and it ought to be considerably curtailed. The salaries of the printers alone appear in the estimates at £1462. When the cost of the plant, which is very considerable, is added to this, with the expense of meterial used — to say nothing of the time of the numerous draftsmen who are constantly at work preparing tracings or other work connected with it — the annual cost must be very heavy ; probably £4000 would not cover it. Another heavy and unnecessary expenditure that has been referred to is the carrying on of triangulation in advance of real requirements. This has certainly been the case. The minor triangulation has been extended over some of the roughest portions of the back country, which will in all likelihood never be occupied or settled during the present generation. I must apologise for the length of this letter, but the subject is one which could not easily be dealt with in a less exhaustive manner.— l am, &c, Behind the Scenes.