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Recruitment and Training Vacancies in the Samoan Public Service which it is hoped to fill locally are advertised in the daily leaflet of press news issued by the Government and made known in any other suitable ways. Appointments for which it is necessary to seek candidates in New Zealand or elsewhere are handled by the New Zealand Public Service Commission. The vacancies are announced in the Public Service Official Circulars and generally advertised also through the press. Training before entry upon duties in the Samoan Public Service is given to certain groups of professional officers. The Samoan medical practitioners are all men who have previously held scholarships to the Central Medical School at Suva, Fiji. Similarly, all Samoan entrants to the teaching profession now pass through the Teachers' Training College at Malifa. Samoan dental officers and nurses receive training at the Apia Hospital. Most other groups of officers (including clerks and typists) have been required to obtain the necessary training for themselves before appointment. This situation is at present in the course of being modified as a result of the scholarship scheme, by which Samoans and local Europeans have since 1945 been sent to New Zealand at the expense of the New Zealand Government for education. Some of the scholars have now left school and are being trained in New Zealand for a variety of positions in the Samoan Public Service. There has been an increase in the last few years in the number of serving officers who have gone to New Zealand to gain wider experience or special training. In some cases they have gone merely for a few months' leave and obtained temporary positions — as teachers, or clerks, or typists —with the encouragement of the Public Service authorities. In a few cases they have used their leave to obtain instruction in technical aspects of their work. In others, however, officers have remained away for a year, or even two years or more, learning to understand fully the workings of the New Zealand Courts, or schools, or Government Departments. The one aspect of training where the record is of but slight activity is that relating to New Zealand officers in Samoa. Owing to the relatively small number of positions available (especially at the senior levels), the New Zealand Government has not been able to form any special service from which positions in the Island Territories under New Zealand administration can be filled. This has not, perhaps, led to any major difficulties as regards some professional officers. Their specialized training is as relevant to work in Samoa as to work in New Zealand, and for such officers a short period of service in Samoa in the middle of a career spent mainly in the very different environment of New Zealand need not be an ineffective or inefficient arrangement either for the officer or the Public Servce. The situation is rather different for officers in administrative positions. For them an understanding of Samoan society and a capacity for adaption are of fundamental importance. The building-up of a body of New Zealand officers possessing these qualities depends both on an adequate system of recruitment and some form of preliminary training. In neither respect has it so far been possible to find a satisfactory solution. New Zealand officers are recruited from the ordinary branches of the New Zealand Public Service. It is not easy to induce men of the right ability to volunteer for secondment for three years from the service in which they have decided to make their career ; nor is it easy to persuade heads of Departments to agree to the loss of responsible or promising members of their staffs. When recruits are obtained they are sent immediately to the Territory to take up their appointments. Often, by their own ability, they acquire a useful understanding of the special problems of Samoan administration in the course of their work. But the system is too haphazard and the proportion of failures too high. The first preliminary steps towards a solution can, however, be perhaps recorded. The Department of Island Territories is adding to its establishment, as opportunity offers, men who have achieved success in the islands and

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