CO129-600-2 Salaries Commission- proposed Public Services Commission 20-1-1948 - 1-3-1948 — Page 89

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Local Machinery for dealing with conditions of service

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The war years have inevitably led to discontent amongst officials over pay and conditions of service. Pay adjustments have frequently lagged behind increases in the cost of living and frequently the consideration of problems which have arisen has either been unduly deferred or superficially treated partly no doubt because of more pressing business and partly probably because of deficiencies in machinery. Whatever the reasons lack of confidence on the part of Government employees and Associations of Civil Servants in the capacity of Government to deal satisfactorily with grievances has become a more noticeable feature in a number of Colonies in recent years. Some of the possible methods of securing improvements in the machinery are discussed below.

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(a) Establishment Officers

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In the past, major problems of conditions of service have in all but a few Colonies been dealt with as part of the many duties of the Chief Secretary or Financial Secretary or one or more other senior Secretariat Officers. While for many years in Malaya, the Establishment Officer has been a high ranking officer, in many Colonies the Establishment Officer or other officers whose full time duties have been devoted to Establishment matters has frequently been either a senior clerical officer or comparatively junior Secretariat or administrative officer with insufficient standing for dealing authoritatively with more important aspects of personnel work. In one or two Colonies recently there has been a move toward securing the appointment of a high ranking Establishment Officer. It is normally desirable that he should be equivalent in rank to a Head of Department or Deputy Chief Secretary and that he should in any event be directly responsible to the Chief Secretary. It would not normally be appropriate that he should be a member of the Executive Council (as he is in Palestine for special reasons) or of the Public Service Commission. He might however usefully attend as an adviser, when the Commission considers appointments to the public service on class to class promotions, and he should attend as a co-opted member in the event of the Commission dealing with promotions within a class.

It is important that the Establishment Officer should be particularly elected for his interest in and capacity to deal with, personal problems and problems of organisation and management. In general, however, he should be regarded as an ordinary member of the Administrative Service not as a specialist; he should have had considerable previous experience in normal administrative work and should not be kept so long on

establishment work that he gets out of touch and sympathy with normal administrative problems.

(b) Whitley Councils.

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There were no Whitley Councils in the Colonies before the war but in the interval a number of Colonial Governments have applied the Whitley system or some development of it with generally satisfactory results. The functions of the National Whitley Council in this country are:-

(i) The provision of the best means for utilising the ideas and experience of the staff.

(ii) The provision of means for securing to the staff a greater share in and responsibility for the determination and observance of the conditions under which their duties are carried out.

(iii)