STAFF IN CONFIDENCE & PERSONAL
2
In addition it is usually written into Colonial Pension Law that death from an accident while travelling by air on duty will be accepted as death on duty for the purposes of compensatory payments to next of kin under the Pension Law. I am not sure whether the proposed revision to the Governor's Pension Acts covers this or whether any undertaking has been given.
(b) Visit passages on death of father, mother, children of a Governor or his wife. Entitlement is not spelt out nor is it clear who would pay the bill. A Governor should not be placed in a worse position than a member of the Diplomatic Service (if he is not a member) nor a member of the Overseas Service Aid Scheme or a Technical Cooperation Officer.
(c) A non Diplomatic Service Governor is not a Crown Servant under the Representation of the People Acts and consequently has no vote. A Crown servant is defined as one drawing his full emoluments from the Crown. A non Diplomatic Service Governor is paid either wholly from local funds, or like Overseas Service Aid Scheme Officers who are in the same boat, partly from local funds and partly from HMG. A sailor in the Merchant Navy is in a privileged position in regard to voting compared with a Colonial Governor.
Whereas the difficulties
(a) Standardisation of leave terms. of rationalising salaries, allowances etc are understood, as is Treasury's reluctance to depart from the long established principle that dependencies bear the cost of their own Governorship, the variety of leave conditions which depend on the relative affluence of the dependencies, the effectiveness of their civil services in resisting any diminution of leave terms, and the effectiveness of local personnel branches in modifying outmoded systems, bears inequitably on OAGS doing the same job under very similar conditions. It would be more equitable to standardise leave either at Diplomatic or Home Civil Service rates and to inform local governments of their liability to meet the cost of leave for the standard period. It is for consideration also, bearing in mind the confines of the small residual dependencies which remain, whether annual leave should be standard in all territories, keeping in view the value of regular consultations in London which such leave permits.
(e) Allowance for Diplomatic Service Personal Assistants who undertake social duties in absence of an ADC.
www
In the smaller territories an ADC would be a waste of money and manpower. Nevertheless the not inconsiderable range of duties concerned with the representational side of a Governor's role; preparation of invitation lists, issal..g invitations, notifying acceptances, maintenance of card indices and control of Governor's Vote salaries, wages and bills for Government House has to be discharged by a busy Personal Assistant, and often in extended hours. The Governor's wife has to assume the responsibility for servants, housekeeping and control of Government House which an ADC, if employed, discharges. Normally inward and outward passages for an ADC are met by HMG, and he is designated under the OSAS and entitled to pay supplement, baggage costs and other benefits. The local government is responsible for basic salary and any mid-tour leave passages. Where savings accrue to the local government (housing provision, transport allowances, basic salary etc) and to HMG (outward and inward passages, recruitment and baggage expenses, pay supplement) there is a case either:
(a) for HMG to suggest a suitable allowance to be negotiated with the local government, and to authorise a Diplomatic Service Personal Assistant to receive it.
Or
(b) for HMG to pay directly a suitable allowance for social
/duties