to get back to the ears of a senior officer through the C.D.O. (which I think is quite legitimate) this may have a good effect. As is well known there is always room for improvement here.
76. The departments whose clients have come most often to us are Immigration, Labour, Police, Public Works, Registration of Persons, Resettlement, Social Welfare and Urban Services. Inclusion in this list is not intended to imply that we have detected weaknesses in the relations between these departments and the public. Where it seems possible that this is the case we take the matter up direct. We hope that it will be possible eventually to draw conclusions from a more systematic examina- tion of case records and to assist departments to give satisfaction direct to the public. In other words an individual complaint will be dealt with as such but a steady flow of the same type of case will also be examined in order to see whether the policy or the procedures ought to be changed.
77. In many cases no department is involved and arbitration is offered in private disputes. People have also been helped to get Legal Aid and compensation in traffic accidents. Statistics of cases where it has seemed to us that free or cheap legal advice beyond our capability is needed have been forwarded to the Registrar, Supreme Court who has this subject under study.
78. People who come are mostly poorer people but the number of relatively well to do is appreciable. It was at one time suggested that we should refuse to consider civil servants' staff problems but in the end they were not barred and some civil servants have brought such problems to C.D.O.s.
79. Success in the field of individual complaints is difficult to measure for it must be a source of some consolation to the client if he accepts that he has had a fair deal regardless of the final decision. Not all our clients have been satisfied but dissatisfaction is not so common as to be discouraging. Our greatest weakness at present is our inability to draw soundly based general conclusions from this work which would be of assistance to departments.
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