N. Z. TELEGRAPHISTS

Marlborough Daily Times, Volume X, Issue 314, 4 May 1888, Page 3

N. Z. TELEGRAPHISTS

You -were recently (writos Wellington correspondent of the Lyttelton Times) informed of the peculiar methods adopted by the retrenchment Ministry in their great scheme for the reorganisation of the civil service, and the case of Major Scammell may be quoted as a sample. That however, is only one case, amongst many. The hardest worked and most poorly paid of the Government departments is the telegraph service. Speaking from an intimate knowledge of the telegraph service in the sister colonies, I am bound to say that the New Zealand Telegraph Department is far and away the most capable and efficient in Australasia. Yet its officers, courteous and intelligent as they are, receive the most paltry remuneration. That in itself is bad enough, but the treament they are receiving at the hand of the present Government is more than scandalous. Of course people don’t trouble very much about the pay of a telegraph operator. These individuals are altogether too significant to take any sympathy. Nevertheless, I am going to relate a little incident, of small interest in itself perhaps, but pointing a moral for all that. Several of the old hands, married men with families, men who have been in the service of the country for fifteen and twenty years and more, some of them, and men whose pay after all these years does not exceed LI 50 per annum, recently applied for increases. I believe I am correct in saying that for some years no increases have been given to the telegraph officers. They were told that everything was being cut down, and that increases of salaries were quite out of the question. Notwithstanding this, quite a young man, just out from Home, who already received L 250 a year from the Defence Department, has just been given an additional LIOO for doing certain work in connection with the Telegraph Office. In fact, he is doing some special work which the head of the Department ought to be doing. The billet seems to have been created for this young gentleman, in order that he might receive this extra LIOO. Of course there is a good deal of grumbling among the men who were refused increases, on account of this job, and they naturally argue that if it were necessary to spend this LIOO, it ought to have been fairly divided amongst the men who are growing grey in the service. Two married men were recently discharged, and yet a billet can be created for a young fellow already well paid, and only a recent arrival in the colony.