STAFF IN CONFIDENCE
2
other dependencies and this requirement should sop up some of the officers who become redundant as a result of independence etc.
Administrative Officers
3. Outside Hong Kong there are presently some 95 senior administrative officers in the remaining dependencies. 71 of these jobs should fall away as the 5 larger territories become independent. In the 1980s, therefore, we should be faced with the problem of providing some 20 administrators of whom about half will be Governors (see schedule at Annex A). Whatever plan is adopted for staffing the senior administrative ranks of dependent territories in the 1980s,
certain needs must be satisfied.
(a) There is a need to protect the interests of the
remaining officer of HMOCS. In fact the supply of these is drying up very rapidly. Most of those who are left available and particularly those with the right type of experience are now in their middle or late 50s. The normal retirement age for HMOCS is 55 and pensions and other benefits are based on that retirement age. By 1980, except for Hong Kong, there will only be 9 officers left, aged under 55, from those presently active in the dependent territories.
(b) The need to maintain and ensure continuity and experience is feet not only in the dependent territories themselves, (e.g. it will be a mistake to have too many Chief and Financial Secretaries without previous relevant experience,) but also in the Office. Mr Posnett in his paper on managing dependent territories has pointed out that those serving in dependencies have a feeling, no matter how ill-grounded it may be, that their interests were looked after better by the Colonial Office whose whole experience concerned dependent territories and where desk officers stayed at one job for a long time, than by the FCO for whom the dependencies are a minor side interest. There is a real med for a cadre of officers available to serve on dependent territories desks in the Office who have had some dependencies' experience. It is not only for the reasons quoted above but also because, as I make it clear below, the senior posts in the dependencies must necessarily be staffed from Diplomatic Service officers after the present generation have retired, i.e. in the early 1980s, that a cadre with that sort of experience is needed.
140
Hong Kong
STAFF IN CONFIDENCE