CONFIDENTIAL
jointly by the three territorial Governments and Britain.
Pensions or
officers who retired from the Federation of the West Indies are safeguarded by annuities with an insurance company. Those who transferred to the service of one of the islands have their Federal pensionable service covered by payments to the island concerned of lump sums: their retiring pensions will therefore be treated as pensions awarded by the island.
41. It is suggested that the Associated States of the Eastern Caribbean should be treated as independent countries. They have executive Public Service Commissions and it would be inappropriate to treat them as dependencies. 42. The dependent territories would be affected in due course and during negotiations for the independence of any of them arrangements would have to be made to ensure that their pensions problems were dealt with on the lines now proposed for countries already independent. Meanwhile the matter in their
7
case will presumably be dealt with on merit and according to need. To distin- guish in this way between independent countries and dependent territories has the incidental advantage of obviating for the foreseeable future a special difficulty in the case of Hong Kong which of all the dependent territories would not really need the financial assistance which a take-over of expatriate pensions would bring.
43.
Following consultations between the FCO and the ODM it is suggested that the countries that might be affected by the proposed new policy should be
categorised as follows:
Eligible for inclusion
Botswana
Burma
Ceylon
Cyprus
E.African Community
E.Caribbean
Associated States
Gambia
Ghana
Guyana
Jamaica Kenya Lesotho Malawi * Malaysia Malta
Mauritius
Nigeria
Pakistan
Sierra Leone
* HMG already responsible through budgetary aid
Singapore
Somali Republic * South Yemen /
Sudan Swaziland *
Tanzania /
Trinidad
Uganda Zambia
#1
11
**
ex-gratia loan advances.
· 13 -
CONFIDENTIAL