The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. MONDAY, JULY 4, 1927. A CHANGE OF DUTIES

Southland Times, Issue 20220, 4 July 1927, Page 6

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. MONDAY, JULY 4, 1927. A CHANGE OF DUTIES

Some legal points will probably crop up in the discussion on the Works Committee’s report on Tuesday, when the Town Council takes up the clauses dealing with the Waterworks. The Council referred to the committee a letter from the Waterworks Engineer and evidently from that matter the committee has decided to ask the Council to hand over to Mr McCarthy full control of the waterworks, while leaving to the Town Engineer all questions involved in the reticulation and delivery of the water. This division of authority is designed to free the Council from the friction between the two officers of the corporation, as a result of differences in ideas about the best means of providing Invercargill with a water-supply. The committee’s recommendation involves a change in the schedule of duties to be performed by each officer, and in the case of the Town Engineer it may provoke a conflict in connection with the alterations made in the terms of his contract. As the whole of this business has not been made public, the facts which have induced the committee to propose this line of action are not known, but in justice to both men it is necessary that everything should be disclosed, and the Town Council on Tuesday night wilL fail in its duty if it does not insist on the whole thing being ventilated. There have been mutterings and hints, but it is safe to say that the public is unaware of any sound reason for the contemplated change, which is not going to remove entirely the ills that have led to , this step. This division in the control of

the Water Supply will produce weaknesses as soon as the Council resumes its consideration of the major question, because it is an open secret that the figures available in connection w’ith the pumping of the water, particularly insofar as they relate to the quantities, have been doubted. If this is so, what reason is there for thinking that they will be received with more confidence under the system devised by the committee. Apart from this aspect of the matter, however, the Council must give attention to the broad question of the maintenance of discipline in its service, which means that before it makes a change in the duties of its major officer it must be sure that it is not doing him an injustice in inflicting on him a penalty—the recommendation amounts to that—for faults, which, if they exist, were not of his making. The immediate cause of this proposed change was a letter in which Mr McCarthy objected to a portion of the Town Engineer’s report on the Water Supply question, adopted by the previous Council. The clauses in this report to which exception was taken by Mr McCarthy referred to “laymen” having recommended pumping in preference to the gravitation supply from Dunsdale; but this is certainly a very late date for the presentation of this complaint to the Council, which, if protection for Mr McCarthy was considered necessary’, should have acted on its own initiative long ago. As the matter now appears, the Town Council is asked to consider and make a decision on a question which touches the conduct of two officers, and before it can do that satisfactorily it must in justice to the two of them give to the public the whole of the facts, lest in trying to remedy what it may consider a wrong to one officer it inflicts a greater injustice on the other. Previously when we have mentioned this matter we have been careful to urge that the major policy questions should not influence the councillors, and it is to be hoped that on Tuesday night individual opinions on this larger issue will have no part in determining the vote. The Council, through the Works Committee’s recommendation, is asked to adjudicate in what amounts to a personal dispute, and if it hopes to make a sound decision it must consider the circumstances fully and in the open. We confess to being very dubious of the course proposed by the committee, and harbouring these doubts we are anxious to ensure for the Town Engineer the presentation of such facts as will show conclusively that no other course is possible. The fact that we have criticised Mr Gumbley’s report severely in the past, does not, in our opinion, mitigate the responsibility on us to direct the attention of the Council and the public to the gravity of the decisions it is asked to make by the Works Committee, and to the need for justice being even-handed.