WORKING CONDITIONS IN FACTORIES. 3
have been allowed to go on leave, possibly for the greater part of the
year, without any suitable appointment being made in their place.
In no province is the present staff sufficiently strong to permit
of this being done, even under existing conditions. Leave vacan-
cies would be best filled by promoting Assistant Inspectors, if they
are competent, to officiate in the higher grade and appointing proba-
tionary officers in their place. If no Assistant Inspector 1s-avail-
able, the work cannot be carried on without a temporary Inspector,
and the fact that these will ordinarily be difficult to obtain furnishes an
additional ground for the general appointment of Assistant Inspectors.
Conferences of Inspectors.
The last conference of Chief Inspectors of Factories convened by
the Central Government took place in 1924 under the chairmanship of the
Member for Industries and Labour. Since then no conference, other
than an informal one held in 1927 between the Chief Inspectors of the
Bengal and Bombay Presidencies, appears to have taken place. The
Factories Act applies to the whole of India and, with the present lack of
co-ordination, methods of administration display differences which are
not justified by conditions, while useful experience gained in dealing with
a problem in one province is not made available for those facing it in an-
other. Werecommend that, in the interests of uniformity and efficiency
of administration, biennial conferences of Chief Inspectors from all pro-
vinces should be convened and held under the auspices of the department
dealing with labour in the Central Government. Such conferences should
be equally valuable to the central and provincial Governments, not only
in considering the adequacy of current legislation and the problems
created by its enforcement, but also in matters such as the uniform
compiling of statistical and other returns. ‘With the extension of
regulation, similar conferences of all grades of factory inspectors and
of as many ex-officio inspectors as possible should be held at intervals
of about two years in the different provinces. This would be of espe-
cial value where reliance must of necessity be placed to a considerable
extent on part-time officers not working under the immediate control of
the Chief Inspector, and where increasing regulation tends to result in an
increasing decentralisation of administration.
Work of Magistrates.
There is abundant evidence to show that the difficulties in the way
of efficient administration of the Factories Act are greatly enhanced by de-
fects connected with the conduct of prosecutions. The Act itself provides
adequate penalties for offences and the scale of maximum fines wag
enhanced by the Legislature in 1922. It also provides that nearly all
offences against the Act are to be tried by magistrates of the highest class.
The clear intention is that cases under it should be entrusted only to ex-
perienced magistrates. Unfortunately, offences, particularly in smaller
centres, frequently come before magistrates with little or no special expe-
rience of the kind required, and the results show too often an imperfect
grasp of the principles of factory law. In the majority of provinces, there
are numerous cases of inadequate fines. particularly for repeated offences ;