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Statistical Staff.
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To this end I recommend a senior inspectorate division of five posts. 1 Chief Labour Inspector and four Labour Inspectors. The Chief Labour Inspector will be a Suuropean (Mrs, hillips is the obvious choice) but the four Inspectors might be European, Eurasian or Chinese.
One of them should be a Chinese woman who should have the education and mental qualities suitable for training on to promotion (in say 10 years) to the post of Ludy Assistant,
It might be good policy to try out a well qu÷lified Chinese man (Miss Hinder's engineering graduate) in this senior inspectorate grade with a view to ultimate prometion to the post of Labour officer. I am of the opinion that a realization that the inspectorate was a stepping stone for promotion to the senior executive posts would have a most heartening effect upon the morale of the department generally.
I regret that I cannot conscientiously recommend any of the present Chinese probationers for immediate promotion to this grade. They would have to contime as Inspectors Grade II, but whether or not there should be further recruitment to Grade II is a matter which must be left to the future to decide.
The question of whether or not the Labour Department should have a Statistical Officer and the accompanying field and office staff is one which is bound up with the general policy of the Colony in regard to statistics, It must be admitted that adequate vital statistics are absolutely essential to any long term planning for improvement of the conditions and welfare of the working classes and should in fact form the basis of almost every phase of labour department activity. On the other hand the compilation and, even more, the interpretation of statistics is a skilled job and requires expensive equipment, Logically it would seem that .departmental statistical branches are likely to prove
an expensive and perhaps inefficient experiment and that the proper answer is a central Statistical office with a special branch devoted to vital and industrial statistics to which the Labour Department can refer its problems and from which it can expect to receive expert advice. If Government contemplates the establishment of such an office then I would submit that it is unnecessary to set up & separate Labour Department statistical office, though it might well be most advantageous to have in the Labour Department a clerk who had received some training in the mechanics of statistical work,
If, however, the Government does not contemplate the early establishment of a central office, or if it is félt that this office will be overburdened with trade statistics to devɔto ample time and staff to labour requirements, then I most strongly support Kiss Hinder's recommendation for a statistical sub- department of the labour department. I would repeat atatistics are absolutely essential to the work of the labour department and if necessary the department must be prepared to undertake their compilation and interpretation itself.
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