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85
Clerical Assistance.
The Public Health Department has always been understaffed,
and this throws an unfair burden upon the present staff. This
is the only department where a clerk cannot be detailed for correspondence,
filing, and duties of similar nature alone, an appointment
carrying with it, in other departments, a grading of Second
Class.
Where so multifarious a number of Orders, Regulations,
and forms arising therefrom have to receive attention as in a
Public Health Department, this duty is most important, and a
great deal of difficulty at times arises from not having all this
work in the same hands. It has been realised on previous occasions
by the Public Health Committee that the clerical assistance
in this Department was inadequate, and on April 27th, 1922, a
recommendation was sent to the Establishment and General
Purposes Committee requesting the appointment of an additional
First Class Clerk for the Department. Much information that
would be of great value in assisting the Committee in their
duties of safeguarding the health of the community cannot be
obtained.
I cannot do better, for the information of the Council, than
quote directly some of the more important suggestions relating
to the investigation of vital statistics put forward by Sir George
Newman, in the Ministry of Health Report of 1919-1920:—
"Instead of accepting a total of, say 1,000 deaths and
its resultant death-rate in a given area, we must proceed to
analysis and differentiation in order to answer the following
questions:—
Wfiat is their distribution in sub-districts, streets,
courts, alleys, slums?