"ملف 1/50 الروتين المكتبي" [و‎‎٣‎٦] (٢٠٦/٧١)

( 123/41/49)
GULF RJBSIDEImCY
BAHRAIN,
9th August, 1949.
Dear Adams,
You are doubtless accustomed to our
constant complaint that we do not have enough
staff here. One partial solution of this
problem would be to effect some reduction in
our work. ks you are aware, we act very frequently
more or less as a post office between the Agencies
and the outside world. jiivery question dealing
with the internal administration of any of the
territories must be handled by the Agencies and
this means that a very large number of letters
which we receive from the Foreign Office merely
have to be copied to the Agency for appropriate
action. We also receive a number of letters from
the administrative departments of the Foreign Office
which likewise have to be copied. If all the
departments of the foreign Office could be asked
to send any letters likely to need passing on to the
Agencies in duplicate, if the subject only applies
to one territory, and in quadruplicate if it applies
to all the territories under our supervision ( and
therefore needing to be copied to Muscat, Kuwait
and Bahrain ), this would save us a very large amount
of work. bimilarly, where suitable, the repeating
of a telegram to the appropriate Agency not only saves
time and trouble for our cypher room, who otherwise
has to send it on, but makes future reference much
easier.
2. There are flso frequent cases in which letters
are addressed tc us which should have gone direct
to one of the Agencies, notably on minor subjects of
what you might call a consular nature. For instance,
Northern Department recently wrote to us about a
Danish seaman in Bahrain; this letcer should have gone
to tne Bahrain Agency direct, I think perhaps one
reason for this is that the Agencies do not appear in
the white lists of the Foreign Office posts, either
in the list of consular posts or in the list of
missions abroad, as a result, both in the departments
of the office and in missions there may well be some
doubt as to what posts really exist in the Gulf.
It might be worthwhile arranging for the Agencies to be
listed in the list of consular offices, I should also
be most grateful if you could bring ths^R ^ato^xs
to the notice of the departments of the Foreign Office
generally.
3. I am sending copies of this letter to a certain
number of posts in the Middle ^ast.
P.G,D, Adams, Esq.,
Personnel Department,
Foreign Office,
London,
Yours ever,
(SGD). J.A.F. GETHIN.