A long wait

1. During his entire career in the Kedah Civil Service, my father had had eight vacation leave (or long leave) which amounted to 24 months. But vacation leave was not easily granted.

2. The first time he applied for vacation leave was on 23 March, 1915 about four years after he joined the Service. He applied for four months’ vacation leave stating his reason thus:

… The object of my applying for leave is to have a change of air and a quiet rest somewhere in the backwoods of Malaya. …

3. He was a Senior Auditor then, aged 33. The Auditor General (AG) forwarded his application to the Regent on the following day recommending that he be granted the leave on condition that the leave would commence by the end of May. My father had requested for the middle of April.

4. The AG convinced the higher authority in view of the fact that the Audit Department was busy auditing the Land Office, Alor Star at the time and it would be busy during the coming budget session in late April through May. So the application was put on hold.

5. It was not until months later that the AG followed the application up when he referred the matter to the Regent for reconsideration. By then the application, embodied in the State Council minute paper, was still pending.

6. In his letter dated 2 December, 1915, the AG requested that the leave be granted to be taken as from 4 April, 1916 by which time all the audit clerks who might have been on leave up to the date specified, would have returned to duty. As regards the locum tenens he proposed one Iskandar Mohamad of the Adviser’s office or anyone else whom the Government might think a suitable man.

7. The Adviser responded that the former could not be spared, stating that there would be no objection if the AG could arrange for the work to be done by his staff. In response to that, the AG noted that the first Audit Clerk could do the work of the Senior Auditor and the second Audit Clerk could replace the first Audit Clerk and also perform his own duties.

8. In his remark to the Regent, the Adviser conceded that as long as the Audit Office could manage without him (i.e. the Senior Auditor) there was no objection to his having leave for two months. Thus, the State Council in its meeting on 20th December, 1915 decided to approve my father’s application for four months’ vacation leave from 5 April, 1916 to 31 July. 1916. After almost a year, his first long leave was finally granted.

to be continued