Description | Geikie, following consultation with the Tropical Disease Committee, has been asked to respond to the Colonial Office's letter of 26 February concerning the claim by the Crown Agents for the Colonies for reimbursement of payments from the Government of Uganda to Professor Minchin's Sleeping Sickness Commission.
He explains that the approximate estimate of £1000 for the Minchin's commission was arrived at on the understanding that it would be unnecessary to include housing and subsistence in their calculations; with previous commissions to Uganda having had their conveyance, lodging and subsistence paid out of Protectorate Funds without specific requests having been made by the Committee. Geikie responded to an enquiry from Minchin, forwarded by the Commissioner of Uganda, requesting a subsistence allowance, but in expressing the hope that an allowance would be made, he did not imagine that this would be charged from the funds granted by the Tropical Diseases Committee for the investigation.
They had previously written against a previous account presented to the Royal Society last November by the Crown Agents for subsistence allowance for Minchin and his assistant, the cost of conveying them from Mombasa to Entebbe and furnishing their lodgings. Two more accounts have since arrived, amounting to £429, six shillings and one pence. The only available fund for the Sleeping Sickness investigation is a promised £500, allotted to the Committee for the current year by the Colonial Office from the Tropical Disease Research Fund. Last year's funds were entirely absorbed by those expenses of Minchin's commission which the committee had originally anticipated, and so, if the current accounts were paid from their funds, nothing would remain for the investigation. He therefore asks if the charges might be met from other funds, or, failing that, if funds for the investigation might be found from other sources. |