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precedent and do not require to be passed to the Governor, making recommendations through the Colonial Secretary for appointments to and promotions in the General Clerical Service, and handling the bulk of the very numerous petitions to the Governor for remission or reduction of fines or public dues.
Both the Assistant Colonial Secretary and the Second Assistant Colonial Secretary submit their recommendations direct to the Governor, except on certain defined matters such as staff appoint- ments and promotions which are required to be passed through the Colonial Secretary himself, or unless they have reason to think that the Colonial Secretary would wish to be consulted.
5. It will be obvious that an organization as above described is quite inadequate for exercising a general administrative supervision over the other departments of Government, even if the independent position of the Heads of the other Departments did not render a supervision of this kind both anomalous and impracticable. If the Secretariat were an administrative body co-ordinating and con- trolling the activities of a number of executive departments in the manner of a Secretariat of an English ministry it would require to be staffed on different lines. As has already been explained. however, in describing the functions of the Colonial Secretary himself, no authority of this nature is claimed or exercised by him over other departments. His function with respect to policies or proposals put forward by other departments is that of criticism, and having regard both to his limited departmental resources, and to his constitutional relation to the other departmental Heads, this criticism must assume a financial rather than an administrative character. This is even more particularly the case with the two Assistant Colonial Secretaries who are officers of comparatively junior rank, and would be at a disadvantage in offering opposition other than on financial grounds to a proposal carrying the authority of the specialized or technical experience of the Head of another Department.
It follows from what we have said that apart from his purely formal and executive functions the real duties of the Colonial Secretary are those of the Governor's Chief Financial Adviser. This would appear to be recognized by the Colonial Regulations which place upon him the personal responsibility for the prepara- tion of the annual estimates of the Colony, and require that the Treasurer shall report to him any anticipated failure of revenue or any instance of default on the part of an accounting officer. On the other hand Colonial Regulation No. 204 clearly designates the Colonial Treasurer as the Chief Accounting Officer of the Colonial Government and declares that the financial as well as the account- ing operations of the Government are under his general control and management. We find some difficulty in understanding what exactly are the respective responsibilities of two financial officers
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under an arrangement which assigns to oue the compilation of the Colonial estimates and to the other and more junior officer the general control of the Colony's finances. It appears to us that the most important and effective means of exercising financial control is through the departmental estimates, and that if the preparation of the estimates is entrusted to the Colonial Secretary, the Treasurer, or, as he is designated in Mauritius, the Receiver-General, sinks to the position of a mere Accountant. Whatever may be the prac- tical convenience of the system elsewhere, there is certainly no room for duality of financial control in a Colony comprising so small an area as that of Mauritius. In actual working it has meant the practical elimination of the Receiver-General from all share in the management of the Colony's finances beyond that of keeping its accounts. He is not consulted in the fixing of the estimates of any department except his own and does not even see the draft estimates of the Colony until they have been printed and laid before the Council of Government. In the discussion of the esti- mates in the Council he is not called upon to intervene unless to answer a question as to the state of a particular account. Their explanation and defence is undertaken by the Colonial Secretary. If subsequently to the passing of the estimates any question arises of additional expenditure for which no provision has been made it is likewise dealt with by the Colonial Secretary, whose permission must be obtained before the Head of a Department can make application to the Governor (through the Treasury) for a special warrant for such expenditure. As a final, and' perhaps the most decisive illustration, of the Receiver-General's exclusion from all financial responsibility it may be mentioned that it is not thought necessary that new measures of policy put forward by other depart- ments shall be subjected to his financial criticisms either before or after they reach. the Secretariat. The only contribution made by the Treasury to the discussion of such measures is a statement as to whether funds are available for such expenditure if it is decided to incur it. The question whether the expenditure ought to he incurred even if the money can be made available is for the Colonial Secretary to consider.
6. We cannot see that any advantage would be gained by re- quiring the Receiver-General to take a more active share in the financial control of the Colony's business. His position as head of the Accounts Service does not enable him to discharge the func- tion of financial criticism more effectively than the Colonial Secre- tary, to whom information as to the actual state of the revenue and expenditure accounts is available at any time. There is no gain and there would probably be confusion in duplicating the work of financial criticism, while if the function were transferred to the Receiver-General, together with the work of preparing the
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