Report and Recommendations of the Civil Service Commissioners.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VII, Issue 1053, 26 June 1880, Page 2

Report and Recommendations of the Civil Service Commissioners.

Nothing, however, could be more undesirable than a Servioe composed of all officers and no rank and file, and departments crowded with those who think themselves entitled to high salaries and commanding positions, but deficient in men who are contented to toil on patiently, yet skillfully, at what must always constitute the great bulk of the work in the Civil Service. There are few employments in which the daily clerical work is so unvaried, or in which all the necessary skill may be more surely acquired by experience and repetition ; and the first step towards economy should be to arrange for all such work to be performed by men who do not despise it as beneath their best attention, nor expect the colony to pay more for it than it is worth. At the same time a few, and a very few, men should be selected as leaders organizers, and directors, and, if their number is not made u necessarily large the colony would be a gainer by paying for efficient supervision whatever may be necessary to retain first-rate men, and to make such a position a tempting prize, worthy of the ambition of every man in the service. We need hardly say that, in order that it may be looked up to as such, no such position should be filled except by meritorious officers who have risen in the service. With this conviction, we cannot recommend any mere automatic scale of reduction in salaries in order to bring the cost of the service [within the means of the colony, but a total reorganisation that will retain all the necessary power and skill, and put all the main work of th« service into'the hands of those willing to do it at its market value. Such an arrangement, - if unflinchingly and impartially carried out, would greatly decrease the present cost of the service and at the same time add to its efficiency. Really moral or leaal claims on the j Government by existing office-holders must, of course, be recognised, but there should be no hesitation in disregariing mere suppositions or traditional claims, and no attempt made to retain men at high salaries to perform clerical work requiring no exceptional ability. Each portion in the department should remain at a stated salary, and promotion in the service should moan removal from a less to a more important or arduous position, and not in any case an inareaae of salary for the performance of the same servioe.