[?]Ost Of Public Servants In Fiji

The Factors of Leave, Travelling Expenses and Personal Loans

SUVA, March 30.

HE cost of civil servants’ leave and of overseas passage-grants has often been criticised by i’s taxpayers, particularly when ; leave involves travel to Eng id for a long period of absence m the Colony at the public ex

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Another source of grievance irly or unfairly) is the granting Government loans to civil ser its. Questions on this point were :ed at the last session of the jislative Council by Sir Alport rker and Mr. H. Maurice Scott, rhe reply to Mr. Scott’s question, ently made public in part, shows it at present loans to civil ser its (at 3 per cent.) total £198,883. far the largest item in the list made up of loans for motor-cars me of which, but by no means , are used in the course of official ty. The 214 loans for the pur ise of cars, with five loans for itor-cycles, total £127,122. Forty en loans for houses amount to 1,788. Loans for the purchase of rigerators (68 of them) total 167; and personal loans £1,806. rhe largest individual loan for a

car is £1,140; and, for a house, £3,100. Refrigerator loans range from £45 to £lOO, and are mostly over £75.

Most of the loans have gone to Europeans, followed by Indians and a handful of Fijians.

Editorial Comment

PROVIDED the Government is not paying more for the money than it is charging for the loan (3 per cent) there does not seem to be much wrong with the system of making loans to public servants, to enable them to live in a tropical country in decency and comfort.

In Fiji, a house, a refrigerator and a car are quite definitely among the necessities of modern life; and as the average official is not over burdened with funds, and usually is a dependable person who will repay a loan, it seems right and proper that he should be assisted in this way.

But the long-continued system of providing the majority of public servants with public funds, to allow them to travel back and forth to the United Kingdom, at first-class rates, is a horse of another colour.

With taxation becoming ever more burdensome, it is not surprising that the non-official classes of Fiji are increasingly restive under this large and growing cost.

In the beginning, the system was not questioned. Practically all Fijis administrative officials came from Britain; they were entitled to

regular leave; and there was justice in their claim that, as their duties brought them to the Antipodes, the heavy cost of visiting Home, should be recouped to them.

But the situation has changed in the last half-century. Now it is possible to fill all except the top rank positions—and perhaps even some of those —from among men and women who have grown up and been educated in Fiji itself, or in the adjoining Territories of Australia and New Zealand.

Obviously, while Fiji remains a British Crown Colony, the staffing of Fiji must be a responsibility of the Colonial Office; and, as obvi ously, the Colonial Office must re gard Fiji as merely one unit in a vast network of Colonies and staffs, spread across the world. So long as British Colonial Office men in other Colonies are provided with cost-free passage to Britain, at leave-time, British officials in Fiji are entitled to the same treatment.

Thus, logically, the non-official classes in Fiji (who, to the extent of 90 per cent, have their roots in Fiji, Australia and New Zealand, and not in Britain) begin to ask themselves—and each other ! whether the benefits and privileges of being under British Colonial Office administration is worth the cost. They point out that, if the public service were filled by men and women from Fiji, and adjoining British countries, without any

obligation to send them and their families every three years to Europe, the saving would be substantial.

But would there be a loss in efficiency? And. if so, would the monetary gain be enough to com pensate for the withdrawal (even if only in part) of one of the finest and most dependable of the world’s

administrative organisations —th British Colonial Service? That seed to be the crux of it.

There may be room for comprd mise. Why should not the Fiji Gov ernment use a much larger proper tion of South Pacific men ad women, not entitled to Europeal leave grants?