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Q.—I may
mention that in a code of rules which Mr. MARSH has drawn
up, which he was good enough to let me look at, I suggested, and he approved, that instead of these bills being gathered together into a monthly sheaf to be passed through the Audit Office with considerable delay, as soon as you are clear a bill is correct it may be paid at once, without reference to the Audit Office, on your certificate that the bill is correct.
A.-Could you get that accomplished?
Q.-I think so. Do you think that would work?
A.-Think? I would go on my knees to the Commission. I have had as many as 50 bills bound into one sheaf; one has been questioned, say a bill for a drawing table, and that has been sufficient to delay the whole sheaf for three weeks. In the same way with the salaries, if there is any little question about a man's pay, the whole staff go without their pay.
Q. Do you remember a change made in the system of requisitioning by Sir JOHN HENNESSY? Whereas you used to requisition at the end of the month for the money you had expended during the month, you were ordered to requisition a month before?
A. I always did requisition before; it is in the Treasury Instructions, but if it was necessary I sent in a supplementary requisition.
Q. And that was what he objected to?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you find the present system hampers your hands?
A.I am in the hands of the weather in the rainy season. A storm may des- troy four or five thousand dollars' worth of work in a few hours. I find the requisition is insufficient, and I have to send up a supplementary one. I never put in larger sums than I am compelled to. I try to keep it down as much as possible. I take the requi- sition home with me, and one night in the month I review the work of the month, and make a guess, for it is nothing more than a guess, how much money I may require for the coming month. If I have a fine month I am pretty well able to carry out my work for the amount approved. If there is a storm I have to send in a supplementary re- quisition, which Sir JOHN HENNESSY invariably declined to sign. I have had to give the idea that a stitch in time saves nine. A sewer that might have been repaired for $100 I have had to leave till it cost $1,000, until I could put it in the requisition.
up
Q.-I suppose you are aware the clerks in your office make out a large number of bills. KAM CHI-SHEUNG seems to write them all, with the exception of a few written by the Contractors themselves, and with some trouble we have extracted from these men a very unwilling admission that they get a sum, which they euphemistically term "to buy paper," but we have found out this amounts, if not quite, to somewhere about one per cent. Don't you think that system should be stopped?
A.-I think so. I did not know they collected anything, but I know they very