COPY
CONFIDENTIAL
Aide Memoire
SNEOA Meeting with Minister of State on 19/10/67
The representations which the Senior Non-Expatriate Officers' Association wish to raise with the Minister of State have been brought to notice on many other occasions: to the Hong Kong Government, to Mrs. Eirene White, the then Under Secretary of State for the Colonies in January 1966 as well as to the then Secretary of State, Mr. Fred Lee, when he visited Hong Kong in August 1966. The SNEOA hopes that their perseverance will bear fruit on this occasion although all their previous submissions have met with no apparent response.
2.
The plea of the S.N.E.0.A. is that with the attainment of the age of majority by White Paper Colonial No. 197 of 1946 it is high time that its provisions are earnestly applied. In these 21 years many backward territories have been brought from the bush to the ranks of independent states. Although we do not suggest that Hong Kong should take the road to independence, we must point out that notwithstanding the culturally advanced community we have here and the success of Hong Kong's citizens in industry, commerce, and in the professions, the declared aim of localization of the civil service has produced no tangible results. According to the Civil Service List as at 1/10/66 out of 278 superscale posts only 48 were held by local officers while out of a total of 281 posts in Seg. D of the Professional Scale only 57 were held by local people: and this latter figure includes 9 who are there on personal extensions without carrying the status. In fact in the last twenty- one years twice the number of expatriates have been freshly injected into the senior ranks of the Civil Service than local people who reached those grades. These observations are borne out by facts and figures: well over 100 of the expatriate superscale officers over 150 expatriates in Segment D of the Professional Scale have less than 20 years service while the whole complement of local officers at those levels numbered 48 and 57 respectively.
The events of the last few months have clearly shown that the few local officers who were found in positions of delicacy at the commencement of the emergency have demonstrated their ability and steadfastness. We think it is fair to say that it is in the community's as well as the Government's interest, to expedite the process of localization so that, to borrow the opposition's language, more "yellow skin dogs" are seen to be carrying on the administration than "white skin pigs".
The bearing of local officers especially the senior officers in standing solidly behind Government in the recent troubles must make it very clear that in the unhappy event of the return of Hong Kong to Communist China there will be no room for these senior local officers in their scheme of things; except possibly in their salt mines. It will therefore be idle for us to pretend that there is no nervousness about the future among the members of the S.N.E.O.A. And this uncertainty is made worse by the discriminatory treatment our members receive in the inferiority of our conditions of service as compared with those of expatriate officers, and in our inequality of prospects for promotion.
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