THE PUBLIC SERVICE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23687, 20 December 1938, Page 10

THE PUBLIC SERVICE

It would be an impracticable undertaking to estimate, from the civil Service list published in a New Zealand Gazette last week, the number of persons permanently maintained in Government employment in the Dominion. The size of this- year's supplement devoted to certain branches of the public service would, indeed, lead one to suppose — erroneously, needless to say—that the number of State servants had shrunk, for whereas last year's list occupied some 270 printed pages this year's is accommodated in a Gazette of much smaller dimensions. Differences in arrangement, it is to be surmised, explain the illusion of a diminishing, army otf State «o»r

ployees! The list, of course, does not purport to represent anything like a complete record of Government employees, for it deals only with those divisions of the public service which come under the jurisdiction of the Public Service Commissioners. Thus the two great employing branches of State service, the Railways and the Post and Telegraph Departments, are not included, staff lists in respect of each of these being published separately. Moreover, since the list takes account of permanent officers only, the section devoted to the Public Works Department does not include the many thousands of men to whom the Government's ambitious public works policy has given at least something approaching permanent employment. Another omission relates to the broadcasting staffs, that of the national service being included while the names of employees in the commercial system are omitted. It is impossible, in the circumstances, to arrive from this list at any estimate of the extent to which the present Government's innovations have added to the size of State establishments and swelled the cost of administration. The department of Housing Construction appears in the list for the first time as a distinct branch of State activity, carrying with it the comparatively small staff of 30. Major staff accretions as the result of the shorter working week will naturally be found in the Railways and Post and Telegraph Departments. The former is commonly believed- to be over-staffed, and there is no reason to.doubt that the losses on the working of the system are related to an increase in the labour establishment as well as to increases in the wages scale.