CO129-590-11 Commission of Enquiry into irregularities in Immigration Departments 22-4-1941 - 19-12-1941 — Page 112

115

this task, it must be remembered, was all the more difficult because I

was at the same time trying muself to learn the established system of

passports, and by trial and error to devise working rules for my staff,

both indoor and outdoor. To crown all, no one knew or could have known

in advance for what demand on the part of the public for our documenta

to be prepared; nor what numbers of staff to engage to meet that demand;

the first of the two months of preparation was therefore occupied in the

task of making a permit-issuing machine, and making that machine work

with approximate regularity; only in the second month was there time to

devoted to the even more important questions of methods of examination

of immigrants and the treatment to be accorded to them in their several

categories. It is impossible to assign blame to any person in connectia

with this particular difficulty; haste was forced upon us by the

conditions of the times, to some extent by hesitation of the home

Government to give full approval to the measures proposed; and so far

as blame must rest anywhere itsust be set to the account of those who

propagated the rumour that the whole immigration scheme was a preparation

for compulsory eviction from the Colony of all who could not show our

immigration documents as a kind of residence permit, a rumour which

caused large numbers to make application as soon as the office opened

while they had no intention whatever of travelling outside the limits

of the Colony.

(11)

Shortage of trained staff. Before this department was called

into existence no fewer than four emergency departments had been created

since the outbreak of war; and others had greatly increased their staff.

Some of the new departments had recruited specially trained men from

outside the Colony, and all had made greater or less demands on the

personnel of existing departments whose need for expansion was less than

their own. The head of any department is reluctant to see any but his

less competent assistants taken from him; but while proportionate bleedin

of all old departments of their experienced and tried subordinates would

inevitably have led to a certain loss of efficiency in each, it cannot

be questioned that to attempt to establish a new department with only

6% of trained men – trained, that is in any sense, and without reference

to the special training for that department's needs – was to invite

inefficiency in the new department.