FIJI CIVIL SERVICE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 280, 26 November 1931, Page 12

FIJI CIVIL SERVICE

PROTEST AGAINST COST PLEA FOR ECONOMY SUVA, Nov. 19. i ‘-It is not that the individual officers 'are overpaid—quite the contrary; their salaries are very low for their attain ments. The trouble is that, our civil service resembles the fabled Mexican Army in which there were more generals than privates.” Thus writes Dr. Hamilton Beattie in an article in the Indian magazine Vriddhi, in which he

joins in the criticism of the Fiji civil service, which, during the past two months, has been very general. Dr. Beattie contended that in Fiji there were too many highly-paid heads of departments controlling small staffs. It was notorious, he said, that these senior officials were largely occupied in doing work which elsewhere was attended to by junior clerks. The most trivial inquiries were habitually referred to the Colonial {Secretary for reply. The writer contends that the offices of Colonial Secretary and Treasurer could be successfully combined; also that all other departments except Justice and Medicine could, with advantage, be placed *under the Colonial Secretary. “The other obvious economy,’* he said, “is in the matter of leave. The amount of leave granted is far in excess of what anyone outside of the service is able to obtain; and the grant of free passages round the world to officials* families should be stopped altogether. The colony cannot afford it.’*

Interesting comment on the situation was also made by Dr. Beattie when he remarked that if a list was made of the richest men in the colony, on a basis of income tax returns, about 15 civil servants would be found in the first 40. This, he contended, was clearly absurd. On a similar basis all Cabinet Ministers in England and in most of the Dominions would be millionaires. He also claimed that the total sum paid in personal emoluments was far too high a fraction of the total expenditure of the colony—over 40 per cent.