Communications and transit > Enquiry on national public works

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A section engineer, who generally held the rank of assistant engineer, was placed in charge
of the section and received orders from the district engineer. He also had a small staff
of technical assistants and clerks. In engineering matters, his duties were to make
cross-sections of dykes and local surveys, to make field notes and to recommend local
changes in the original project, to make estimates of earthwork required, to direct the
progress of the work according to the schedule; to control the labourers, to sanction
payment for work done, to look after and report on the health and safety of labourers,
to co-operate as fully as possible with the landowners and gendarmerie, and to make
weekly reports of the progress of the work.
In each section there were officials to look after the recruiting and handling of
labourers, another to look after supplies, and one or two who attended to the correspon¬
dence of the section and its general affairs.
(b) Sub-section Organisation.—Kach section was subdivided into ten sub-sections,
or tuans ”, with one foreman in charge, and, where circumstances required, an additional
man serving as assistant foreman. Kach “ tuan ” had five hundred men working in it,
and was divided into twenty gangs, or “ pai ”, of twenty-five men each. A gang leader
was picked from each gang and acted as its representative. He was responsible for the
behaviour and work of every man in the gang.
(c) Enlisting Field. Staff.—The enlistment of the field staff on the scale required by
the work was not a simple matter, especially in view of the rapidity with which the
districts began to function in succession. The work was partly engineering, partly relief,
the one no more important than the other.
(d) Recruiting Procedure.—One of the most important and difficult of all offices in
the district at the beginning of operations was that of the recruiting officer.
/The recruiting officers usually obtained a list of the famine sufferers from public
bodies in the various provinces and from relief societies, and used it when going to the
villages. The recruited labourers were given a badge number. When twenty-five
labourers had been recruited, they were organised into a gang. The most intelligent of
the group was made the boss of the gang and given the No. i badge. As soon as a full
gang was recruited, they were sent to a designated place for work. Families were pre¬
vented from following the gang, unless absolutely necessary. The names of the gang
bosses were clearly shown in the rolls. All matters of concern to the labourers were
explained to them clearly.
The recruiting officers told them that the construction of these dykes was an endeavour
on the part of the National Government to obtain permanent security for the people, that
their labour would be paid for from relief supplies, that everybody should work hard in sup¬
port of the good purpose of the Government. When a sufficient number of labourers had thus
been recruited in one village, the recruiting officer moved to another village for the same
purpose. When the recruited labourers arrived at the sections, the section engineers
reorganised them and gave them new gang numbers.
(e) Methods of paying for Earthwork.—Alter the arrival of the refugee labourers on
the spot, they were assigned to one borrow pit clearly marked. They began to dig the
earth and to pile it on to the dyke. At the end of each week, the technical assistants
together with the foremen, measured these pits in the following way : first, the length
and breadth of the pits were measured, which would give the horizontal area- next the
depth at many points was measured (the number of points depending upon the'regularity
or the irregularity of the bottom of the pit), and the average depth calculated. The
two results were multiplied to obtain the volume of the pit, which represented the quantity
of earth excavated within the week.
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