17.
105
side of Government on this muddle is perhaps to be read in a minute
of 24th January in 050.2863/41.-
"Accountant-General.
Referred.
This seems to me a very complicated and involved
way of circumventing the failure to recruit a competent staff, and it gives to the intending immigrant the discretion of assessing his own deposit, always presuming he comes from a place where he can purchase a draft on ilong Kong.
Bd. K.F. Dutters.
24.1.41."
I referred to certain suggestions I made in regard to the abolition of drafts.
There
The comment is typical in its entire absence of helpful constructive criticism; I should like to add that in effect I don't think the comments from the financial side of the Government has ever been anything in the nature of constructive criticism. has been allegation of blame after the event; it is typical also in its strict adherence to traditional procedure and failure to appreciate the problems of a department forced by the ti✰ con- ditions imposed on it to work a seven-day week and to handle on Sundays and holidays and out of normal office hours very large sumn in cash, in the hands of a staff which had no special or general training nor even an established procedure to guide then.
I had done my best to rid the department of the incubus of this troublesome system of cash deposits, writing on 23rd Jan. and again on 8th Feb. the two minutes of which the originals are to be found in C50.2863/41.
Hopeful that I had made the urgency of the situation sufficiently clear, I then turned my attention to question of the agencies once more. What question was more acute than ever, not
only because I had in the mentine accumulated even more reasons to distrust their methods, but because the ever-increasing problems left me less time than ever to give them the surveillance required, while the same deposit refund system placed further op ortunities for
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