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(e) It is provided, however, that where the circumstances
are such that immediate payment is necessary without allowing prior reference to the Treasury, payment may be made from an imprest account granted to the Head of Department. Such payments are made on the personal responsibility of the imprest holder and are subject to review later by the Treasury.
In these Colonial Regulations no attempt is made to
prescribe detailed forms or procedure or to lay down precise forms
of receipts for money and the accounting officers of each
administration are given a free hand to institute such records
as they think fit within the framework of these Regulations. It
is, perhaps, hardly necessary to point out that these Regulations
merely give effect to elementary principles well known to all
accountants, the Colonial Treasury occupying a position in
Government corresponding to that of the Accounts Department in a
business firm.
Towards the end of October that is to say, more than two
months after the report of Mr. Middlebrook - the question of
accounts for the proposed new department was raised verbally and
on 31st October suggestions were made, copy of which is to be
found at (1) in Treasury file No.33/26/30, and a form of
departmental cash book devised.
(Mr. Pudney here read extracts from Treasury File No.
33/26/20 copies of which were laid before the Commission).
This cash book was not adopted, I discovered later, nor was
any other form of general departmental cash book instituted.
It is significant, too, that although it was admitted that
deposits would have to be refunded from imprest cash the
Immigration Officer accepted probably adequate an imprest of
$1,000 sufficient to refund, say, 20 deposits per day.
it was found when the department commenced to operate, that an
imprest of no less than $40,000 was necessary. In October, in
fact, it was not even thought that the number of deposits
anticipated justified the printing of a special form of deposit
receiptp
Eventually