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with a view to seeing whether any sections could be usefully put up to tender. One further point arises in this connection.
The Chief Resident Engineer maintains that he can do the Tunnel work 25 per centum cheaper himself than any contractor can. If the work is run on strictly economical and economical business lines this is not perhaps an over-statement since the contractor's profits are saved. The advantage of the contract system therefore is primarily in saving of time. The governing factor in this line is the Tunnel, and if all the rest of the line can be completed well before the Tunnel is, the advantage of saving time by contracts for anything except the Tunnel is not obvious.
The point at issue therefore is not a question of time but of cost, viz.:- whether the work can really be done appreciably cheaper by the Railway Management or by Contract.
Turning next to (b) I should like to see the Instructions to which Mr. Ives refers. Large contracts (other of course than a contract for the whole Tunnel or similar ones) can I presume be entered into with the sanction of the Govern-
(c) has already been dealt with under (a), but in view of this statement it is all the more necessary that Government should be able to satisfy itself on this point.
3.
The next point discussed was Tunnel Contracts. There are at present very small lengths (15 feet) but Mr. Ives said he had recently entered into a contract with one of his own Overseers (Chinese) for an unlimited amount at a specified rate per foot terminable on either side at a week's notice. He informed us that his difficulty in this matter was that if he let a contract to a Chinese the work involved as much supervision as if being undertaken by his own staff. If he let small sections to European Contractors they were capable of carrying it out without detailed supervision. In neither case however was there any contract in the usual sense of the word. There was no public tender, no competition was invited, no security deposited