below the minimum necessary to secure the best material
available. The corollary of financial stringency is not
that standards of quality should be reduced, but that
the structure of the Government services should be
overhauled so as to secure the best possible return for
the money expended. Every effort should be made to
develop the employment of the inhabitants of the
territory concerned in duties up to the limit of their
capacity. In the Administrative as well as in the
professional and technical services, expensive and
highly qualified officers from outside should not be
employed to do work for which local recruitment can
provide the necessary personnel. The possibility of
delegating to locally-recruited staff any duties on
which Administrative officers are at present employed
should be carefully and continuously studied, with the
object of effecting reductions of expenditure rather
by a progressive decrease in the numbers of personnel
recruited from overseas than by cheapening the quality
of that personnel. Such a policy is consistent with,
and indeed is an inevitable corollary of, the political
progress of the Dependencies. But it should be carefully
planned and regulated so as to take effect with the least
possible disturbance of the even flow of recruitment; for
it is a steady and consistent demand, rather than mere
numbers, which is of primary importance in maintaining
the prestige of the Colonial Service as a career, and
encouraging a sufficient supply of young men of the best
type to prepare themselves with a view to entering it.
January, 1933.
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