Wanganui Chronicle AND PATEA-RANGITIKEI ADVERTISER. "NULLA DIES SINE LINEA." WEDNESDAY, JUNE 23, 1880.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXII, Issue 9145, 23 June 1880, Page 2

Wanganui Chronicle AND PATEA-RANGITIKEI ADVERTISER. "NULLA DIES SINE LINEA." WEDNESDAY, JUNE 23, 1880.

The anxiously looked for report of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service was signed on the afternoon of the 18th instant, and seat at oneo to his Excellency the Governor. We have not yet received a copy, but suppose it to have been published, because the Evening Post, whilst stating that, if printed in co;taiso, it would occupy eight columns of that journal, gives what purports to be a very full summary of the contents. Upon the Post's summary, as the best source available at the present moment, our remarks will be based. In the first place, then, the report is what may be truthfully called a " slashing " one, meaning by the word that the Commis sion have hacked at the Civil Service of the colony in a perfectly unprecedented manner. Blows have been aimed at every portion of it, and whilst we are not prepared to say that every word of adverse criticism may not be justified by the facts, we have been forced into the belief that the investigations of the Commission have been so hastily conducted as to detract very much from their value. They themselves admit in the opening paragraphs that they had not had sufficient time to procure all the information necessary to enable them to report on all the departments of the service ; that some important brandies had been left totally uninvestigated ; that they had enquired very superficially into others ; and that they had investigated none exhaustively.- In affixing his signature, Sir Kobert Douglas adds a note in which he calls attention to the above deficiencies, and says : — " I wish, therefore, the report had stopped short of proposals on which the entire reorganisation of the Civil Service, as a ivliole, is recommended to be based." It woulu bo impossible, with thu limited space at our disposal, to review the whole work of the ConuaisBiou in one issuo. We shall, theroforo,

cpnfine ourselves at present to that portion of it which deals with the Railway Department, being the branch of the service to which the attention of the Commission was first directed, and which, in their opinion, most urgently requires reform,. Whilst even here, as we have seen above, their investigations have not been exhaustive, they have collected a masa of evidence which speaks plainly of stupendous bad management and something worse, and. which, we venture to say, will take the public very much by surprise. Depending confidently on the trustworthiness of our Special Correspondent, we some days ago announced that the report would recommend the removal of the present heads of the Railway Department, and we now find that our in« formant was not only correct as to the fact but also with, regard to tuc reasons assigned for the necessity of such an extreme measure. Both Messrs Conyers and Lawson, but especially the former, have made for themselves reputations as excellent chiefs. They have been supposed to possess in an eminent degree the qualifications necessary to direct the smooth and successful working of railway organisation. Tho Commis sioners take a totally different view of the matter, as will be seen from the following extracts :-r-" They find that the South Island Commissioner has capital in a firm contracting with the department of which he is the head, and that his receipts from this capital depend on the success of the firm. Such a fact can hardly fail to influence the action of officers serving under the Commissioner, and entirely to destroy the confidence of other firms tendering for railway supplies. It is impossible to estimate the amount of loss which the colony may have suffered from this obviously false position held by the working head of its principal railways — a position that should not be permitted under any circumstances." With regard to the North Island Commissioner they say: — "Loose, irregular, and suspicious transactions of the kind they have mentioned appear to be confined to the South Island railways ; in the North, formalities and safeguards have been adhered to with great strictness, and sometimes carried a little too far ; but in neither Island could they find any evidence of able, searching, economic supervision, or any protection of the public interest. They found the Commissioner of the North Island insufficiently informed upon many important details of his own department, without ft knowledge of which it was impossible that he could efficiently protect the public interest ; and distant officers were evidently guided and restrained withaveryloosehand." Farther down the case against the two Commissioners is summed up in the following words : — " While the Commission found it easy to detect much that was irregular, wasteful, and extravagant in the management of our railways, especially in the South Island, the Commissioner of that Island stated in his evidence that he has "done all that he could, and sees no way of making the service more economical." This can lead to no other conclusion than that someone else should take in hand a service of such vital importance to the prosperity of the colony, and susceptible of a very large reduction on its present expenditure. The New Zealand railways are not managed so ably or so economically aa they might be, and an effort should be made to place their control under a more able head. The present Railway Commissioners, however excellent they may have been in the subordinate offices previously held by them, have not displayed the high qualities necessary for the responsible tasks they have undertaken ; and, such being the fact, no personal considerations should be allowed to prevent their removal from the control of an interest so inseparably connected with the prosperity or adversity of thia colony. One permanent head of the department would be better than two, and, if a sufficiently able and reliable man could be found to take that position, thei'e are already enough offi* cers in the service to carry out his directions with energy and exactness. The service should be reorganised, and the head should be rather a good business man than simply an engineer or mere railway expert, and should be expected to manage the department as a private proprietor would, so as to make it pay and serve the public." When the blue book makes its appearance the public will be able to read in full the evidence of the mismanagement of which the report speaks. The Commissioners say that on the South Island Railways they found extravagance and a disregard of proper precautions in the expenditure of public money ; that men with no spec al training had been appointed to highly - paid offices which were unnecessary ; that there was divided authority to an extent which interfered with public convenience and threatened public safety ; that many officials had not nearly enough work to fill up their time ; and that there were wanton waste and destruction of Government property. We quote the following sentences with regard to the last charges :— " In some parts of the colony they found heaps of unprotected stores going to destruction, and in others the same kind of stores being purchased from private merchants, or manufactured at an excessive cost. The most culpable facilities are ofiered for dishonest appropriation. There is no real check on the quantity used by the various departments, and consequently the correctness or incorrectness of some very eleborate and expensive returns furnished to the Government is quite a matter of chance. In one instance thirteen railway carriages were left so exposed to the weather that it cost £1477 to put them in a fit state for \ise, before they had earned a shilling. Valuable engines are still allowed to remain exposed to weather, with the sea spray blowing over them. There is an absence of proper arrangements for protecting from weather valuable property of all descriptions." The Commissioners further say that there has been enormous waste of public money in Government work-shops, and cite instances in proof of their verdict. Scarcely any of these disclosures will give rise to more public dissatisfaction than that which relates to some of tlie contractors in the colony for railway plant. At the time wlieu it was especially necessary that local firms and workmen should be honest and true to themselves and the public, we find the Commissioners writiug that " waggons built by contract in Dunedin wore delivered in Christchurch at the end of last year in a state thus described by a witness : 'Some of them were disgraceful ; bad workmanship, bad timber. Tho timber was unseasoned, stringy bark was put iv instead of iron bark. The joints were not properly made. . , , Some of them had the bottom frames held up only by the nails in the flooring boards. . . . Some of them we have had almost, to rebuild within six weeks.' " We shall return to the report in our next issue.