10
11
"Mr. DRUMMOND:
I rather got the impression that the meeting which Mr. Forrest referred to between His Excellency and the Colonial Secretary varied to some extent the decision of the Executive Council. There were to be no monopolies but this variation permitted a certain degree of monopolistic preference.
Mr. SMITH:
A certain degree of advantage in the way of premises and advertisements and so on-
or more than that?
CHAIRMAN:
What actually happened was that, by the agreement with Mr. Kobza, he is put in such a position that the other agents can only come to the Immigration Office through him, so that to that extent, as the sole channel through which they can reach the Immigration Office, he is given a preference. I take it that that detail was never discussed?
Mr. SMITH:
I think I can say, certainly, that that was never contemplated. I might add that this agreement which Mr. Kobza signed was only seen by me at a very late stage. He brought it up one evening-I was still in the office between 6.30 and 7-and he came in and showed me this agreement which was signed.
CHAIRMAN:
After it had been executed?
Me. Smrtu:
Long after, I think. In fact, it was fairly recently. I was surprised to see it. It
came as a complete surprise to me.
26. The agreement having been executed and a banking account having been opened by Mr. Kobza, the one provision of the agreement which imparted some measure of financial control on the operations of the agent was by parol agreement abrogated. No auditors were appointed, no accountant was available to countersign cheques, and they were in fact countersigned by Mr. Kobza's secretary, a lady in his pay and a very intimate friend of Mr. Forrest. We would add that before Mr. Kobza was appointed general agent no tenders were called for, though that was clearly contemplated by Executive Council, the terms of the proposed agreement were not submitted to the Crown Solicitor, Government's financial advisers were not apprised of the step contemplated and no security was taken from Mr. Kobza.
27. Mr. Forrest has consistently argued that the General Agent is agent not for the Immigration Officer but for the public who deal with him, and that therefore he handles no public moneys, Government supervision of his accounts is unnecessary, and he should not be called upon to give security for the due performance of his duties. Suffice it to say that in the course of the examination of Mr. Kobza it transpired that Mr. Forrest had authorized him to issue temporary permits without reference to Mr. Forrest. This, we would point out, is a clear unauthorized delegation of the duties of the Immigration Officer, involves the issue and recognition of a form of permit for which the Ordinance makes no statutory provision and is open to every possible financial objection in that the permit forms are unnumbered, are not audit forms, and have never been submitted to Government's financial officers for approval or examination.
"
28. Of the whole matter of the appointment of Mr. Kobza as general agent we take a very grave view adverse to Mr. Forrest. We cannot resist the conclusion that, having advocated the grant of a monopoly with the enthusiasm of a convert ", Mr. Forrest, despite the adverse decision of the Governor in Council, determined to persist in the appointment of Mr. Kobza as agent in a preferential position to other agents. The provision in the agreement for its termination by three months' notice is one which might well give rise to misgivings in Mr. Forrest's heart, for Government on learning of the agreement might order him to terminate it. The supplemental agreement was the remedy for any such unfortunate state of affairs.
We can draw no other conclusion
from Mr. Forrest's failure to take any advice, administrative, legal or financial, before executing such an agreement, from his failure to report its existence and from the later execution of the supplemental agreement. For the delegation of the power to grant
immigration documents or for the issue of permits for which there is no statutory authority there can of course be no excuse. The whole transaction has left on our minds a profoundly bad impression, and is, in our judgment, quite indefensible.
treatment.
Recruitment of Staff.
37
29. The remaining terms of reference call for lighter and less lengthy and detailed As regards staff Mr. Forrest found himself from the very beginning beset by difficulties. As Mr. N. L. Smith said in the course of his evidence "We did our best to get you staff but it was not easy at that time. The War Taxation Department bad, I think, taken the cream off most departments in the previous twelve months.' Mi. Forrest therefore had, to a large extent, to build up a new organization with material which had no previous training or experience of Government methods. He himself has told us that the proportion of untrained to trained personnel was never less than ten to one. A first advertisement inserted in the local press, for which Mr. Forrest was in no sense responsible, calls for applications for the post of Assistant Immigration Officer at a salary of $450 per mensem (inclusive) and provides that applicants shall be British subjects of pure European descent between the ages of 21 and 28 and of a certain educational standard. We cannot refrain from the comment that thus to limit the field of a selection by excluding the great majority of possible local candidates to whom the salary offered would be a real inducement strikes us as hardly the most likely way to recruit a suitably intelligent and impeccable staff. Ultimately a staff was assembled, largely consisting, as far as the more senior and responsible posts are concerned, of Mr. Forrest's own personal friends. We hasten to say that to the appointment of friends simpliciter we take no objections, and there is no ground for suggesting that to any of his friends Mr. Forrest extended any preference in the depart- ment. On other grounds, however, the staff selected gives cause for great dissatisfaction. Among the European Assistant Immigration Officers are two whose short-comings have already been reported to Government. When at the end of November, 1940, Mr. Ferrest applied to Government for covering approval of the appointments which he had made, he was instructed to dispense with the services of three of them as soon as possible. One was dismissed forthwith; the other two whose past records will hardly bear close examination are still members of the Department. Further comment is surely unnecessary. Among others recruited by Mr. Forrest are two whom the police, on good grounds, regard as shady characters and not respectable persons. Of the Chinese staff generally little that is adverse can be said. A man who was dismissed from Government service for demanding money with menaces, and was then used as King's Evidence in a recent sensational trial, is said to be employed in the Department under an assumed name,
but there is no suggestion that Mr. Forrest was aware of his record. The police report that twenty seven members of the staff were unknown at the addresses given by them, while several others used these addresses as accommodation addresses only. It is invidious to mention individuals by name and most of the evidence on which we base our recommendations regarding individual members of the staff is contained in secret files, and we are therefore making separate recommendations to Your Excellency under this head under confidential cover. Generally speaking we desire to say that, faced as he was with the supremely difficult task of assembling a large staff in very short time Mr. Forrest acted unexceptionably, except in the cases of three officers whom he appointed although he was aware when he did so that each of them had a record which would have made his acceptance into any other branch of Government service an impossibility.
30.
Complaints of Discourtesy.
We have received and investigated a number of complaints containing allega- tions of discourtesy shown to members of the public by Mr. Forrest or members of his staff. It is only fair to say, however, that we also received a number of tributes to the invariable courtesy, patience and helpfulness extended to the writers on their visits to the Immigration Office. To get this question in its proper perspective one must remember the conditions under which Mr. Forrest and his staff were working, in grossly inadequate accommodation, surrounded by a clamorous mob of applicants, and at the beck and call of everyone in the building. Of all the complaints we received and investigated only three in our opinion are sufficiently serious to make it impossible to explain them away by reference to the stiffness of the new machine or to the conditions under which work had to be carried on. When we say this we do not mean that other complaints were
35
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.