See Police Ordinance
11 of 1900. Section 24.
185 (40)
We think that all Inspectors and officers of lower grades should be engaged on monthly agreements, and thus it would be perfectly easy for His Excellency to promptly get rid of an unsatisfactory or unreliable servant, or if this is not considered desirable, that they should be engaged on similar terms to members of the Police Force.
360. The basis of pay offered by the Government, coupled with the fact that long service carries with it a substantial pension, should be sufficient to ensure a good class of men being obtainable and their remaining in the service. We would state that more than one of the leading firms engage their men on monthly agreements and experience no difficulty in securing all the employees they require, and retaining them in their service, and this without the attraction of a pension.
361. We would suggest as a matter of detail that the Sanitary Inspectors should in future be called Inspectors of Nuisances, as was formerly the case, and as is still done at home, and that those attached to the Engineering Department should be designated Overseers.
With regard to the diaries which they are instructed to keep, it appears the Inspectors look upon these as their own personal property, and destroy them at the end of the year, although the books are provided by the Government.
These diaries should be kept for a certain period, say 3 years, and should be deposited in the Secretary's keeping at the close of the year.
363. A complete record should also be kept of the work done by the individual members of the staff, and monthly portage bills drawn up shewing the district in which each man has been employed.
The Commissioners have more than once asked the name of the Inspector working in a certain district on a certain date, in the inmediate past, but no record of this has been forthcoming, and the required information was not there- fore procurable.
364. We further find the use of "chops", that is, stamps with an officer's name, is in common use in the Department; this is a most reprehensible custom, and should at once be discontinued, as there is nothing to shew by whom the "chop" has been affixed to a document.
365. The Inspectors of Nuisances and Overseers should be given to under- stand that they form part of a large Department, and are not free to act on their own initiation.
Under existing conditions, owing to the want of proper supervision, and in part to the ambiguous wording of the Ordinance, the Inspectors have unquestion- ably misunderstood their position.
366. It is only too obvious that that strict discipline which must be main- tained if a large Department is to be satisfactorily managed, is altogether wanting, and as
a further consequence an unfortunate spirit of insubordination exists which should be checked.
367. This was very notably exemplified by the attitude taken up by the Inspectors on hearing Your Excellency had considered it advisable to appoint the unofficial Members of the Sanitary Board to form this Commission.
368. Something appears to have been said on the subject by some of the Senior Members of the Staff at one of the fortnightly Meetings, held under the Presidency of the Acting Principal Civil Medical Officer.
A meeting of the Inspectors was then called the following day, under the Presidency of Sanitary Surveyor BRYAN, at which all the Inspectors, with two or three exceptions, were present.
369. Most intemperate speeches were made by several of the Senior Inspectors, who ventured to criticise the appointment of the Commission, denouncing those selected to form the Commission, and their supposed intended line of action,
Page 300Page 301