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דיוT

PECORD

OFFICE

Reference

C.O.882/12

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY, WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE AT REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC.

COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT 10

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24. It is far from my intention to suggest that you should on these grounds refuse the Minister's request for the services of an expert and, having regard to all the circumstances leading up to the present situation and the fact that I am acting for the permanent Governor. I do not feel justified in advising that you should authorize me to use my reserve powers to prevent the compulsory retirement of two Assistant Conservators, but I consider it my duty to place before you the views which a careful survey of the situation has compelled me to take. I assume that you will consider these views in consultation with your technical advisers, and I can only hope that, if you confirm them, the Minister and his Executive Committee may be induced to postpone these reductions of the superior staff of the Department until the advice of a forestry expert is available to them.

25. With regard to the Minister's request that application should be made to the Colonial Development Advisory Committee for assistance towards the expenses of the training in England of Mr. C. A. H. P. Jayawardena, Assistant Conservator of Forests, as Utilisation Officer, I have communicated to the Minister your telegram No. 132 of the 30th August, 1933, in which you stated that before such an application could be made you would require to be assured as to future policy regarding the main- tenance of the staff of the Forest Department, and the Minister is aware of the contents of your Circular despatch of 12th July, 1932, to which reference is made in that telegram. I have endeavoured in this despatch to state clearly, accurately, and impartially the present position in regard to the staff of the Department, and I must, of course, leave to your decision the question whether the conditions on which you would be prepared to support an application for assistance from the Development Fund are fulfilled. I sincerely hope that such assistance can be granted. The services of a trained Utilization Officer will be invaluable to this Government, and I cannot believe that the Minister, the Executive Committee, and the State Council will fail eventually to realize that the maintenance of an adequate Forest staff is essential to a national service which it would be disastrous to neglect.

I have, &c..

YOUR EXCELLENCY,

Enclosure 1 in No. 35.

F. G. TYRELL.

Ministry of Agriculture and Lands,

Colombo, 2nd August, 1933.

I HAVE the honour to state that I regret I have to address you again on the subject of the reorganization of the Forest Department.

2. Your Excellency will remember that you were pleased, a few weeks before my departure to England, to grant me an interview in connexion with the reorganiza- tion proposals regarding this Department which my Executive Committee had put forward. At that interview and in previous correspondence I explained the policy involved in those proposals and my Committee's reasons for its adoption. Let me briefly recapitulate these reasons.

3. In the first place, my Committee was convinced, as indeed everyone was convinced since the revelation was first made in the Report in 1929 of the Committee on the Commercialization of the Forest Departinent, that there had been a profligate waste committed on our rich natural forests in the past, and that the only way to repair that waste was by Development Schemes scientifically prepared and systemati- cally executed.

4. Secondly, it was clear that the acute depression in the country's finances which called for drastic retrenchinent in establishment would not permit an extension at this juncture of the areas of development.

5. Thirdly, apart from the necessity of retrenchment, it was deemed not merely inadvisable but positively disadvantageous to the country to embark upon extensive development schemes to be prepared and executed by officers now at the top of the Forest Department, with whose scientific knowledge or practical competence my Com- mittee had no reason to be impressed; men, indeed, whose special qualifications for the work they would be called upon to undertake were practically nil.

6. For these reasons, it was proposed that the only responsibility that should be laid upon the Development Branch of the Department should be the mere main-

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tenance of the existing plantation schemes and the completion of such schemes as were already in hand. It was further intended that the activities of the Exploitation Branch sliould also be so restricted that only such use should be made of what has been left of our natural forests as would be possible without especial endeavour, for it was quite clear to the Committee that no proper scientific exploitation scheme could be put into effect without the advice and assistance of a qualified expert whom the Com- mittee contemplated recruiting in the future: And, finally, it was agreed that the maintenance and protection of the inaccessible Reserve Forests and the Village Forests which could not be commercially exploited with profit should be undertaken, not by a large protective staff specially detailed for the purpose, but by the existing organization of the Revenue Officers and their Headınen with a small addition of Forest Officers to assist them.

7. In accordance with these considerations, my Committee, as Your Excellency is aware, examined several schemes and suggestions proffered by various officers who had at one time or another served as chiefs of the Forest Department. After a careful scrutiny of these schemes and suggestions, my Committee formed the opinion that a senior staff of nine officers would be more than adequate for the volume of work that the Department would be called upon in the next financial year to perform. At the same time, the Committee and I did not contemplate that this staff should be rigidly fixed for all time. It was definitely intended, as I made it clear to Your Excellency in my letter of the 4th April, to expand the activities of the Department when the depression lifts and the country's finances permit it. In preparation for that expansion, it was proposed that advantage should be taken of the exceptional opportunity which the Secretary of State informed us was presented by his offer for the special training at Prince's Risborough in England of a Utilization Officer, with a promise of help in the way of a recommendation to the Colonial Advisory Development Com- mittee for financial assistance towards the cost of this training.

8. I deeply regret that Your Excellency should have thought it fit to delay your sanction to the Acting Minister's recommendation to send Mr. C. P. Jayawardena for this special course. All development of a forest policy on proper lines depends on the success with which a Utilization Officer can bring to bear his special knowledge. As the Secretary of State himself put it on the advice of the Forest Products Research Laboratory, to develop markets it is essential to have at least one officer who knows considerably more about extraction, conversion and uses of the timber and marketing than the average Forestry Officer." Mr. Jayawardena, who adds to the qualification that he is a son of the soil interested in the well-being of his country the qualification of being the only officer in the Forest Department who has to his credit an original contribution on Čeylon timbers, was specially selected as he had already been recom- mended for a Carnegie Scholarship for a course in impregnation and wood preserva- tion. It was hoped that Mr. Jayawardena would, "on" his return, be sufficiently equipped by his training to act satisfactorily as an assistant to the exploitation expert. referred to earlier, and that the result of experiments on our woods which it was expected he would be in a position to make (without the necessity of forwarding con- signments to England for experiments as hitherto) would prove useful in indicating to the Development Branch what species from a commercial point of view would be most suited to be planted in our new development areas. My Committee and I con- sidered that the services of an officer so trained would be essential for a progressive, purposive forest policy in the future, and that it would then, and perhaps then only, he possible for this country to possess a Forest Department which, co-ordinating as it would its activities in its respective branches, would in due course produce such results as would justify the expenditure on it.

9. It is therefore with something in the nature of a shock that I heard, on my return, that Your Excellency had withheld your sanction. I gathered, and I have since learnt from the correspondence, that Your Excellency deferred your decision "until the question whether the senior technical staff of the Forest Department is to consist of 11 officers or 9 has been settled." Your Excellency will, I hope, permit me to examine later the soundness of the reasons for deferring your decision until this

question "

was settled, but may I respectfully beg leave to state that, before my

question departure to England, I received the clear impression that the "

"had in fact been settled?

4

10. Your Excellency will remember that a conference was held in regard to this very question and, as no decision was then reached, the Acting Financial Secretary, the Chief Secretary, and I were requested to consider the matter further. In pursuance

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