CO885-(11-12) — Page 329

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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Reference :-

C.O.882/12

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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE. LONDON

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estimates, the Colonial Secretary would, apart from his duties as a Member of Council, be little more than the Governor's Head Clerk,

The real question which we think arises is whether it is either necessary or desirable to retain two separate departments each with a nominal responsibility for finance which only one of them exer- cises or need exercise. In the next section of our report which deals with the organization of the Treasury we have suggested on the grounds both of economy and administrative efficiency that a number of revenue-collecting and other services which are at present attached to that department could with advantage be trans- ferred elsewhere. If these proposals are adopted the Receiver- General will be shorn of a large part of his present duties and his responsibilities will be reduced to that of a general supervisor of the Accounts Sections of his department, which are already well provided with superior officers and should not require the continuous personal attention of their administrative head.

We consider that in these circumstances the need for retaining the separate post of Receiver-General will disappear, and that a better arrangement would be to concentrate the whole manage- ment of the Colony's finances in the one department by transfer- ring the Accounts services of the Treasury to the Colonial Secre- tariat, and merging the post of Receiver-General in that of Colonial Secretary. The post of Assistant Receiver-General could also be abolished under the scheme.

7. It would be desirable that with this enlargement of the scope of its activities there should be some internal reorganization of the Secretariat. We would suggest that it should be divided into three branches, one dealing with matters of general policy and all matters not specifically assigned to either of the other two branches, the second comprising the Accounts services (other than the Chief Examiner's Section), taken over from the Treasury, and the third dealing with matters relating to the organization, staff, premises, and equipment of all Government departments. The first, which might conveniently be known as the General Branch, would comprise the Registry and all Correspondence Sections, and should be under the supervision of a Chief Clerk; the second would be the Accounts Branch under the control of the Head Accountant transferred from the Treasury; the third, for which the term Establishments Branch would be an appropriate designation, would comprise the present Chief Examiner's Section of the Treasury and the existing Staff Records Section of the Secretariat, and might be placed under an officer of comparable rank with that of the Head Accountant, with the title of Deputy Director of Establish- ments.

For administrative staff we would propose the same number as at present but would replace the post of Second Assistant Colonial Secretary by a second post of Assistant Colonial Secretary, which

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would be on the same footing with the first as regards status and salary. One of the Assistant Colonial Secretaries should deal with all matters arising in the General and Accounts Branches, i.e., matters of general policy, taxation, and all Government despatches except those relating to Establishments issues. He would be in general administrative charge of the two branches from which his work was derived, his duties in regard to the Accounts Branch being those which now fall to be discharged personally by the Receiver- General in connexion with the Accounts Sections of the Treasury. We would suggest that this Assistant Colonial Secretary might be designated the Financial Assistant Secretary, as indicating the special nature of his functions. The other Assistant Colonial Secretary, who might bear the secondary title of Director of Establishments, would deal with all matters, arising from the Establishments Branch including Government despatches relating to such matters.

8. The proposal to set up a separate Establishments Branch in the Secretariat for the whole Mauritius Civil Service requires some fuller explanation, inasmuch as it naturally raises the enquiry as to how it has been possible to dispense with an organization of this kind for so many years. We can only reply to this enquiry by stating that the Mauritius Civil Service appears to us to be suffering from many of the ills for which an Establishments De- partment is the known and effective remedy. It is in several departments considerably over-staffed, as will be seen from the long list of unnecessary posts whose suppression we recommend elsewhere in this report. That it is generally overpaid by com- parison with business and professional standards in Mauritius is, we think, undeniable. The existing rates of remuneration are out of all proportion to the pre-war rates and, although those rates were probably too low, part of the increases which have since been obtained should have been made dependent upon the fluc- tuating cost of living. A further defect is the use of obsolete methods of work, in illustration of which we would mention the great amount of unnecessary copying and précis-ing of documents, and the keeping of duplicate or otherwise superfluous transit records, all due to the want of any proper or uniform system of registration of papers. Card indices and loose-leaf registers are nowhere in use, and the departmental book registers are often The standards of office equipment needlessly full and detailed.

are often extravagant and wasteful as in the use of expensive leather bindings and superior quality of paper for ordinary office registers which are in current handling for comparatively short periods and are thereafter required only for occasional reference. It is unnecessary to multiply instances of a general want of civil service organization. The case of the General Clerical Service will be a sufficient illustration. Although this service is subdivided into no less than six separate grades, exclusive of the Writer grade

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