326
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We further recommend that the budget should be presented to the Council of Government and should forthwith be considered by the Council in Committee on the 15th April or first Monday following that date, and should then be considered by the Council in a session which should continue on every weekday until the budget is passed. There is no constitutional basis for the present method. The practice of considering the budget only on one day a week and of prolonging these occasional discussions into the new financial year is against all public policy. The budget is the most serious financial issue before the Council and continuous session is necessary for its discussion. The dates which we suggest will give time for full discussion, if the session is continuous, and we regard it as absolutely essential that the completed estimates should reach the Secretary of State before the beginning of the year.
CHAPTER XIII.-RETRENCHMENT.
We have tabulated in Appendix I the financial effect of our pro- posals for reorganization in certain departments. This table shows (a) the posts which we propose to abolish and the posts which we think it necessary to create, and the net resultant saving; (b) the precise effect of our scheme on the general clerical service; and (c) the savings under " Other Charges." The railway is not included.
The total reduction may be summarized as follows:-
General clerical service
Secretariat and Revenue
Law and Justice
Medical
Education
Forests
Public Works
Other departments
Total
Number of Posts.
40
85
5
Rs. 171,079 127,700 10,194
46
78,075
11
78,310
88
221,742
28
91,820 13,000
303
791,920
46 new posts are created against 303 abolished.
This statement does not include the changes in the Agricultural Department, where no net saving will be made. Neither does it allow for the fact that the Colony will not be required to meet from its balances the sum of Rs.359,000 for completing the irriga- tion works, or the sum of approximately Rs.100,000 for continuing the campaign against the phytalus, otherwise than by research, or for subsidizing stockbreeders.
2. It is difficult to calculate how far these savings will be reduced by the payment of pensions and gratuities. A number of
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the posts concerned are not pensionable, others are held by incum- bents on a temporary basis, others are actually vacant, especially in the Medical and Forest Departments. A number of vacancies can be created by the retirement, without special gratuities, or officers who have reached the age of 55 years. The new posts will absorb a number of officers, e.g., 10 superior clerical posts are created which must be filled from the general clerical service. In the Heads, Medical, Education, and Law, these factors are so important that the immediate bill for pensions and gratuities should not exceed Rs. 30,000 and should be reduced in the following year to little more than Rs.7,000. The conditions in the Public Works Department are different, and in the first year the whole of the net savings may be absorbed in gratuities, though the pension bill will not thereafter reach Rs.30,000. In the general clerical service, Revenue Departments and Forest Department, we anticipate that the cost of gratuities will be equal to half the net savings, though the permanent extra charge for pensions should not exceed Rs.55,000. As every individual case is different we cannot make an accurate calculation, but we do not think that it would be safe to allow for a net saving in the first full year of more than Rs.400,000, the balance of Rs.392,000 from these departmental economies being held available for gratuities. In later years the pensionable charge may be taken at Rs.92,000 as an outside figure. 3. The reorganization of the departments cannot have a large influence on the financial position in the present year, 1931-32. In some cases the economies can be introduced almost immediately; in the majority we cannot expect that they will be in operation for more than two months of the year. We cannot therefore take a figure exceeding Rs.100,000 as the net amount which can be saved this year after deducting Rs.92,000 for gratuities. We are compelled to consider other more immediate remedies.
No remedy for the financial embarrassment of the Colony has been set before us more consistently than that of the retrench- ment of the pay of the public services. The comparison of the total cost of the services in 1913 and in 1931 was strongly empha- sized, and the alarm expressed at the steady growth of expenditure throughout that period was not surprising, even allowing for the fact, of which our witnesses commonly failed to take account, that some of the most important services of the present day, e.g., the Medical and the Agricultural Departments, have been developed in quite recent times. When we examine in detail the history of the increase and consider the grounds on which it was made, we find not a little justification for the popular view.
4. The first comprehensive reorganization of the pay of the Civil Service was made by Sir Alfred Herchenroder's Committee on the 2nd February, 1918. This scheme was based essentially on
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