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M T T T U V V H
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divisions are more closely concerned with practical work; the Agri- cultural division is mainly devoted to sugar, and controls the experi- inental work in the fields, besides having charge of the Govern- ment gardens. There is a branch in Rodrigues. The Sugar Tech- nologists are the chief advisers of the Government and of the factory owners on the technical work of the sugar factories. The tobacco division not only deals with tobacco cultivation but tends to be absorbed in questions of tobacco manufacture in regard to which it is likely to overlap the work of the Tobacco Excise Branch of the Revenue Department. The Veterinary Branch deals primarily with the prevention and detection of disease, but what may be regarded as a section of this branch is the Government Dairy, the accounts of which are treated on a commercial basis.
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4. Before considering measures for the improvement of this work, which at this point we briefly summarize, we must deal first with its finance. The work of a Department of Agriculture must inevitably be composite, but it is not necessary for its financial system to be incoherent. This is the case now, and the fact is directly opposed to sound administration: it is impossible for the Colony to realize what its liabilities are in respect to the work of the Agricultural Department so long as there is this confusion between the budget and the funds. The first simple principle of Government finance must be that revenue should be shown as revenue and expenditure as expenditure.
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The special export duty from which the Agricultural College, the Sugar Technologists, and the Sugar Cane Research Stations are partly supported should be shown under Revenue Head 1 (2) as Sugar Export Duty. If any part of the anticipated revenue of the tobacco warehouse is used by Government for the pay of its officers it should be shown under Revenue Head IV as an item Con- tribution from Tobacco Warehouse ". Any income which is realized from private persons by (a) sale of plants, (b) sale of pro- ducts from experiment stations, or (c) sale of milk and other pro- ducts of the Dairy, should be shown in Revenue Head IV accord- ing to the appropriate item; but this income should not include any purchases by other Governinent departments. The spending departments should show what they expend on purchasing milk, etc., and the producing department should show its cost of pro- duction, less receipts from other departments, as net expenditure. The payments of one department to another are not revenue for the purpose of the budget. The proper place for a profit and loss statement of an enterprise like the Dairy is in its annual report.
We are recommending elsewhere that the Improvement and Development Fund should be closed, and we make the same recom- mendation in regard to the funds Appendix VIII Agricultural and Appendix IX Government Dairy. It is wrong that the whole or part of the pay of Government officers should be concealed by being entered in an Appendix. Where an officer is given an allowance,
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its nature and amount must be shown by an item in the budget Head placed immediately below the item of the officer's salary. We recommend that the expenditure items of these funds should in future be incorporated in Head 25 Agriculture, but in the case of the Dairy the entry "less receipts from other departments should be made so that only the net expenditure is shown. Receipts from private persons should be shown as revenue, and should not be deducted from the expenditure of the Dairy.
5. The dangers of the present chaotic system of finance are clearly shown in the case of the Entomological Department. We have described this as one of the research divisions, but it is very little of the kind in its present form. There has been no ento- mologist since the death of the late Director of Agriculture; there is an assistant entomologist, on the comparatively low rate of pay of Rs.6.000. with a "Scientific Assistant on still lower pay. The rest of the expenditure of this branch, Rs.119,740 or one quarter of the expenditure of the Department of Agriculture, is devoted to the executive work of catching the phytalus beetle which preys on the sugar cane.
This amazing campaign has now been carried on for twenty years, and has cost one million rupees. The result has been that whereas 27 million insects were destroyed in 1911, the captures in 1930 have been 265 million beetles and 137 million larvae. It is certainly with no exaggeration that the Director has told us that the destruction of phytalus has become a minor industry of Mauritius. The beetles are caught by night and are sold by the tinful to the department which pays a rapidly expanding reward for their capture. The officers who direct the payment of what is now a very appreciable sum are the Chief Pliytalus Officer on Rs.3,000, two Assistant Officers on Rs.900 and Rs.840, respectively, and three assistants on minor pay who are charged to the Develop- ment Fund. It is evident that the expenditure in this remarkable way of one quarter of the money which he controls must be a very present burden of responsibility on the Director of Agriculture. The administrative risk is an obvious one for there is no possible check, as the Auditor himself has admitted to us.
Equally alarming is the financial risk. The Director of Agri- culture holds out no prospect of diminishing the phytalus by the simple means of capture; everything points to a progressive increase in the numbers and consequently in the amount of the rewards. At present the expenditure is relegated to an entry in an appendix to the budget. But the Development Fund which has covered so many embarrassing items of expenditure will soon cease to exist by the process of exhaustion. Then the phytalus campaign must be brought into the unpleasant glare of the budget. From what resource will the recurring charge of Rs.100,000 or more be met?
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PUBLI
PECORD OFFICE
Reference -
C.O.882/12
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