· 19-
110
and with an average experience, if we except Mr. Tsui Wai Pui, specialised to the passport section, of three weeks at the date of their allocation to my department.
There remain two large categories of employees in the depart- ment, namely the office attendants and the large numbers whom, for want of a better collective term, I call my outdoor staff, although a number of them have been all the time, and all of them for part Of the former category of the time, been engaged on inside work. it may be sufficient to say that all were totally inexperienced, and to invite anyone who doubts the effect on the smooth running of an office of a completely raw staff of attendants and messengers to try the experiment. In the latter category, Mr. A.J.G. Taylor stands alone as having had previous Government experience; he did not, as I have already said, become an effective member of my staff until 10th December, and was almost at once specialised to quasi- administrative work in the New Territories, where the difficulties of communication made it necessary to have in charge of the wide area a man of experience, capable of working independently subject only to the most general guidance from myself; without an officer of Mr. Taylor's energy and reliability it is not too much to say that the department would have failed completely so far as the New Territories are concerned; the magnitude of the task allotted to him might have excused failure even without the artificial difficulties placed in the way of almost every constructive effort on the part of the department when it sought to organise itself in any direction.
The remainder of my outdoor staff had to be chosen, as Govern- ment declined to release to me, at the expense of other departments, men with experience, from spontaneous applicants or from those who made application for employment in response to advertisements. few exceptions I shall refer to later. special experience in immigration work, or even general experience of Government work, were not to be thought of; and all that could be done was to make the selection of men who appeared to have the requisite qualities of intelligence, character and education, so far as I myself and
A