Taxpayers Turn Critical Eye

On Fiji’s Civil Service

Prom Our Own Correspondent

Suva, May 29.

rpHE arrival of a Civil Service Salaries X Commissioner in Fiji has not im proved the temper of the taxpayers of Fiji at a time when the income-tax payment deadline has come round again Taxpayers take it for granted that the principal outcome of the commissioner’s activities will be increased Civil Service salaries, and they have taken it equally for granted that the increase will have to be met out of taxation revenue in one form or another.

Most of the resentment goes no further than talk and an occasional outbreak of correspondence in the Press. However, the tax-paying community is looking at the Colony’s Civil Service with a more critical eye than at almost any time in the past.

For instance, certain Civil Service privi leges are being heatedly debated. It is generally conceded that public servants recruited in New Zealand or Australia or Great Britain may be entitled to leave grants, which cover travelling expenses of themselves and their families, when they return to their homelands on “long leave,” at three-yearly or four-yearly intervals.

But why, it is asked, should Australians, New Zealanders or Fiji-born people be entitled to occasional leave trips to Eng land at the expense of Fiji?

THIS point illustrates one of the main grievances of taxpayers In the Colony —the very heavy burden of expense caused by salary-payments and grants to

public servants who are away from the Colony for many months at a stretch.

A secondary question is: Although passage-grants and leave-grants to public

servants may be justifiable, are they jus tifiable in the case of public servants’ wives? This has produced a suggestion that such grants should be made only if the wives concerned carry out “duties in the service of the community” on the same lines as those performed by many Governors’ wives.

There have been demands for drastic economies in Government departments to meet the cost of any increase in Civil

Service salaries. This sort of thing, how ever, is by no means peculiar to Fiji.

The only new angle is that the size of the Colony’s Civil Service is sometimes said to be out of all proportion to the Colony’s population—and particularly of the tax paying section of the population (pre dominantly European and Fijian; the Fijians being taxed by their own Adminis tration to a point which is officially ad

mitted to be at the highest possible limit).

FROM the Government’s point of view, the situation is obviously complicated by the endless demands for new or expanded social and other services, often pushed, politically and otherwise by every possible means.

The Indian community’s political

leaders, for instance, are tireless cam paigners, in the name of “equality,” for practicaily everything that the European expects in the way of social services, apd usually the Indians get what they want.

Yet only a small proportion of the Indian population pays any sort of direct taxa tion, and it is frequently admitted that the Government has, so far, found it im possible to corner a large number of Indians and, probably other Asiatics, who ought to contribute substantially to in come tax revenue but blatantly evade it.

Further, the tremendous and accelerat ing increase of the Indian population must impose an increasing burden of expense, especially for education and medical services, with a disproportionately small increase in taxation revenue.

Fiji’s income tax, by British, Australian and New Zealand standards, is certainly not a crushing burden on the strictly limited number of people who pay it. But indirect taxation has reached a peak which, reflected in the cost of living, is making things all but impossible for Europeans on moderate salaries. And the cost of living is hitting taxpayers and non-taxpayers of all races.

THIS explains why many Europeans are in a state of wordy revolt (but no more) against the possibility of in creased taxation to meet increased Civil Service salaries unless there are signs of drastic economies in the working of the Government and, possibly, some reduction in those Civil Service privileges which are not enjoyed by others.

There is a growing realisation by Euro peans that they and the Fijians, whose provincial, education and other levies (many of them unacknowledged, but nonetheless compulsory) are to a con siderable extent carrying the tax burden which ought to be shared by others who dodge their responsibilities but take full advantage of every benefit within their reach. The onus of collecting taxes fairly is obviously on the Government, and the Government’s failure to do the job, what ever the difficulties, is another of the

grievances of those who do pay taxes— even if only because they have no hope of evasion.

Editorial Note

THE high cost of living is hitting every one in British countries and it has not been proved that the Fiji resi dent is any worse off than residents of other parts of the British Commonwealth.

The high cost of living is the result of 40-hour weeks, other socialist experi ments and general unwillingness to work, following closely on the most expensive war in history. Only now are we feeling the full economic effects of post-war policies.

In this case, the taxpayers of Fiji ap pear to be crying before they are hurt.

The income tax has not been raised yet —to meet increased Civil Service salaries or for any other reason. In the mean time, it should be acknowledged that even a Civil Servant must eat, and the fact that the Colonial Office has sent a Salaries Commissioner to Fiji at all, indicates that the Civil Servant’s salary is due for review.

The cost of government in the Crown Colony of Fiji—that is, through the Colonial Office —is probably much less of a financial burden than, for example, the ruinously expensive Parliamentary gov ernment system as it has developed in New Zealand and Australia.

As our correspondent points out, how ever, the tripping about of Civil Servants at the taxpayer’s expense is quite another matter. This applies, particularly, to those recruited in the Southern Hemis phere. There seems no reason why these men should be given free travel to the UK. Broadly it can be said, perhaps, that the day when the Colonial Service was a merry-go-round on which officers rode round and about from Africa, to the Indian Ocean, to the Pacific and the West Indies, is gone. The problems of these colonies are individual and should be served by men prepared to devote a life-time to them. They will not be solved by men who must necessarily treat them as temporary irritations along the way from one Colonial Service appointment to another.