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14
Omitted Points
42.
A small number of civil service salary scales include provision for an officer to jump incremental points in the scale. The 1971 Salaries Commission introduced these jumps for reasons which they did not explain.
43.
The advantage of omitted points is that they reduce the length of a scale for particular professions where a long scale may be considered inappropriate. The disadvantage is that the provision of omitted points in some scales and not in others leads to a degree of unfairness in treatment and therefore to resentment among civil servants who do not benefit from them.
44.
The question of the continuation or otherwise of omitted points has not been raised in any of the representations received by the Commission and it would now appreciate comments on this issue.
45.
VIII Conversion Arrangements
The Commission has received a suggestion that there is a need to revise the existing administrative rules for "converting" officers from old to new pay scales.
46.
At present, two different (and rather complicated) methods of pay conversion are in use depending upon whether the change is a salary "revision" or a "restructuring" of the grade. In practice, the distinction between the two is sometimes difficult to make. The main rule is that an officer transfers to the equivalent point in the new scale. That is to say, if he is on the third point of his existing scale, he transfers to the third point in the new scale.
47.
The Commission would welcome comments on the suggestion put to it that a simpler set of rules should be devised, subject to the over-riding provision that no officer should receive less as a result of a change in a pay scale, but that immediaťe increases on conversion should be limited to those justified by the circumstances.
IX Model Scale 1
48.
The 1971 Salaries Commission intended that officers on Model Scale 1 should form the base for a non-pensionable industrial civil service to be established at a later date. The principles and practices to be applied to Model Scale 1 officers, other than those applicable to the civil service as
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}