Nowhere in the Salaries Commission Report 1965 can we find a
reference to the effect that equal pay should only be obtained at the expense of our male colleagues. For, if the wage fixed for men was originally based on a fair assessment of the job's worth, how can it be justified by reducing this to the lower rate paid to women?
Apart from the effect the action of bringing the male salary scale down to the level of the female scale would have in encouraging the overall discontent within the profession, the slight to the female nurses in excluding them from the women civil servants to be granted equal pay with men as from 1st April, 1969 can only be detrimental both in its present demoralising effect on the female nurses and in the lack of appeal which nursing will have as a profession to women --
the sex from which it draws recruits in the overwhelming majority.
There already exists an acute shortage of nursing talent. In 1968 the frightening loss to Hong Kong through resignation by trained, highly qualified nurses and nurse trainees was 222. Though numbers are replaced, the quality of trained versus untrained staff is obvious,
Under present conditions there is little incentive, either financial or through promotion, for the intelligent, trained nurse to make a career in Hong Kong, and if the envisioned expansion of hospital facilities for the Colony should materjalise (the new Laichikok Hospital), well trained staff will be found sadly lacking.
It may be thought that the 1968 loss of nursing staff may have been
an effect of the 1967 disturbances in the Colony, however, while this may have been true in a few cases it is equally true that the majority of resignations were due to poor financial remuneration as compared with what is offered In other professional fields in other countries and to the lack of promotion prospects. The current proposals will only encourage the discontent, lower professional morale and speed the exodus from Hong Kong of our trained nurses, both male and female, and greatly impair the efficiency of the Medical Department and its services to the people of Hong Kong.