HARBOUR BOARD CHANGES

Observer, Volume XVI, Issue 921, 5 September 1896, Page 2

HARBOUR BOARD CHANGES

New Billets and Old Officials

The Harbour Board officials are not always a happy family amongst themselves, and some of the departments under our local Marine Fathers are usually in a state of chronic growl against one another. The dredging embroglio has been the latest bone of contention, and one set of officials have been swearing till all was blue that the other fellow was wrong, when committee inquiries were held regarding the precise locality of which the Harbour Board's big backet-yacht deposits its silt outside in Bangitoto Channel. The contractor was

accused of not going far enough to sea with hi& pleasing cargo, bnt after voluminous depositions were taken, the jury, that ia the committee, returned the time-hon-oured verdict of ' Not Guilty, bnt don't do it again.' But the dredger has lost its interest for Board officials now in view of the rather unexpected change which the Harbour Board made this week in the personnel of its staffThe chief storekeeper has been retired from his billet, which is conferred upon a junior, two assistant storekeepers are to be employed at £130 per annum each, the Secretary is instructed to employ more assistant storekeepers when necessary, and, more important still, Mr £. W. Burgess, who has held the fort as chief clerk for so long, is to be shifted on to open-air work on the wharf, where he will in future be known as the Board's traffic manager — and probably come in for as much abuse as the City Council's traffic manager for trying to satisfy two masters — hiß own employers and the outside public.

Bat, unkindest cat of all, a ' competent ' clerk and accountant is to be advertised for, at £200 per annum, to fill Mr Burgess's place. This is decidedly rough on the present staff, but then the chairman of the committee which drew up the scheme is a stickler for up-to-date book-keeping, and management. The duties which will devolve on the new ' traffic manager ' will include part of the wharfinger's work, we believe. We wonder whether the Board will supply the necessary uniform? Will Mr Traffic Manager Burgesß be required to stalk about in gold lace and braid, and naval cap and a drum-major's staff of office, directing the traffic on the wharf, and working order out of confusion, or will he be supplied with a little coal-black nigger-boy to walk before him and announce with a bell the approach of the exalted functionary, at whose beck all disorderly drivers of cabs and too-anxious carters must halt and tremble ? Is he but we want to know too much. We will wait and see.

The pilot system ia another branch of the Board's service which needs amendment. The Board has already started to do this by giving the contract for the pilot service to a new firm at an increase on last year's cost. This is queer economy. But they are going further, and are calling applications for the position of pilot and deputy harbourmaster at a salary of £200. The intention is to make the pilot nil up his spare time assisting the harbourmaster But if we know pilots at all, we guess they won't be very much down the Queen-street Wharf. It's much pleasanter — in the summer time at any rate — out on Tiritiri shooting rabbits, or purloining the festive and succulent oyster where the wavelets gently lave old Rangitoto's shore. Who would forswear the piscatory pleasures of hooking schnapper and kahawai out in the channel, while waiting that convenient mail-steamer, for the worry of hanging round the harbourmaster's office, or getting some steamer berthed ? If such there be, he were unworthy of the name of pilot. But if Anckland is going to be the busy port of yore, and we don't doubt that it will be in the golden days close at hand, then the pilot will not have much time to spare on the wharves, if the service is to be made a really efficient one. And we doubt if it is efficient at present.