Poverty Bay Herald

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XIV, Issue 5055, 30 December 1887, Page 2

Poverty Bay Herald

PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING OISBORNE, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1887. THE CIVIL SERVICE. Ministers are to meet in Wellington early next month, and the first business to be taken in hand is to give practical effect to the retrenchment scheme. As shortly as possible after that date the Civil Sorvants who are to be dispensed with will receive notice of their dismissal. There is not much time to be lost, as Parliament atfiiin assemb'es in April, and the Government has promised to present a full list of the reductions to members next session. Ib is not a matter to be hurried over lightly, and Ministers have little enough time at their disposal for the work, besides attending to their other dutiea. Retrenchment is hardly one of those things of which it can be said that it would be well if it were done quickly. Rapid despatch would assuredly mean individual wrong and hardship, and Ministers acted wisely in not submitting to hist Parliament a detailed list of the reductions. Had Ministers yielded to the pressure sought to be brought by certain members of the Opposition, and laid before Parliament a list of the reductions, the scheme would have been a moat ill digested one, and there would probably have been generated in the public mind so strong a feeling of resentment that the whole retrenchment scheme would have been jeopardised. It would never do to leave the matter to tho Undersecretaries and fche heads of departments. The public servants of the colony are generally an efficient, body of men, but everyone knows that in nearly every department of the service a great deal of 1 favoritism has been shown, and officers have not been promoted according to their merit. The favoritism that has been shown in the appointments and promotion* would undoubtedly be displayed if the retrenchment scheme were left in the handa of the permanent heads of the departments. Some of these gentlemen seem to take a pride in defying public opinion, and have an idea that the country cannot do without their services. Tho f.-ict is that Ministers were often so ignorant of office affairs that they were completely in the handa of the Under-Sec-retaries. Major Atkinson does not belong to that class of politician, and thero is no man in the colony who has a bettor knowledge of the inner working of the departments, and if he only permits himsolr to be gnided by a sense of justice his work will give general satisfaction, though of course there will be the inevitable individual discontent. The danger lies in the Premier beinu guided by red-tapeism. Tf should not follow that if a dozen oiiicials could bo spired from a particular fa partment they should ba dismissed from ;.i3 Gove.nment employ. The service

should be treated as a whole, and men with the strongest claims and whose Hervices are moat valuable transferred from one department to another if need be. Ministers have been very reticent up to the present regarding the manner of effecting retrench tnent, and not the slightest inkling has been given as to the principle on which the reductions shall bu made. It is quite possible that the Government will proceed on entirely the wrong basis of treating each department separately. That has been the almost invariable rule in years past, and all experience shnvs that tho bonds of redtape are not easily broken. We are "lad to see that the Government has n>t resolved upon the unwise step of placing all the employees of the State undnr notice, and afterwards select the officials to be retained or roj-ct^d That extreme course is only resorted to in a time <>f panic or terrorism, such as that whicti occurred during the time of the Berry regime in Victoria. The Civil Service has not long now to wait for the details of the retrenchment scheme, and if it be carried out in a just and statesmanlike spirit very few deserving servants of the public will have cause to deplore the result.