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return for the release of aid promised earlier by HMG to the Zanzibar
Government.
The Peoples Republic of South Yemen has not accepted responsibility
for the pensions of expatriate officers of the pre-independence governments and
no Public Officers Agreement has been concluded.
from aid funds and the cost this year is £170,000.
These pensions are being paid
The Southern Yemen has also
effectively defaulted on the payment of local pensioners, as has Zanzibar.
4. The biggest default has been that by Tanzania which in 1967 announced its
intention to cease from July 1968 payments of all pensions to overseas officers
earned before the Tanganyika and Zanzibar Public Services were freed from the
Secretary of State's control and not to repay the proportion of the compensation
and commutations loans related to the same period. In consequence HMG has had
to pick up an expatriate pensions bill of about £1m per year. Aid to Tanzania
has ceased save for a technical assistance programme which is being allowed to
work itself out.
5.
HMG's readiness to accept responsibility for expatriate pensions payments
on which other governments have defaulted is embodied in an assurance given to
the Overseas Service Pensioners Association in 1964 by the then Secretary for
Technical co-operation and known as the Carr/Robertson Undertaking.
undertaking stated that
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The
if for any reasons it should so happen in relation to the payment
of a pension that a pensioner found himself in financial difficulties
Her Majesty's Government would feel obliged to take appropriate
remedial action. "!
Payments are made to pensioners through ex-gratia loan advances, which are refundable in the event of a defaulting government retrospectively resuming
responsibility,
6. While maintaining the fundamental principle stated in paragraph 2 above,
HMG has helped overseas governments with the cost of pensions in three ways.
Some governments, eg Malawi, have received direct budgetary grants-in-aid to
cover the short-fall between revenue and public expenditure, including that
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