95
Inspectors even if they have not attained that age.
As for the comparison with Environmental Health Officers in the United Kingdom, we have already stated in paragraph 6.22 of our Report No. 2 that the pay and structure of the Hong Kong civil service should be related to Hong Kong circumstances and not to those of other countries.
Our conclusion therefore is that while it is reasonable for the Urban Services Department to accept, as it does at present, a proportion of matriculants as Student Health Inspectors, a case has not been made for denying school certificate holders entry to the grade.
We have also received a proposal to change the period of training of Student Health Inspectors from two years to three years to enable them to obtain practical on-the-job experience. We support this proposal, which should make the training more effective and alleviate, if not eliminate, the age problem. We also believe that if the revised training arrangements are introduced, the quality of the trained Health Inspectors should further improve, thus better preparing them for managerial responsibilities at senior levels, including Directorate posts.
In view of the "sit-in" undertaken by the Health Inspectors in June/July this year, we thought it appropriate to keep the Administration informed of the progress we had then made in the review of this grade. We therefore submitted a letter to His Excellency the Governor on 24th June 1980. A full text of the letter is in Appendix XII.
On the assumption that a three-year training
programme will be introduced, we propose the pay scales of the student rank and the first two functional ranks of the grade should be adjusted as follows, to align them with those of comparable grades :
Existing
Proposed
Student Health Inspector
LO
5
- 6
5
7
Health Inspector II
17 24
18
25
Health Inspector I
25
-
32
26
32
Senior Health Inspector
33
W
37
33
37
Chief Health Inspector
38
43
38
-
43
Superintendent of
44
47
44
w
47
Urban Services
Senior Superintendent
48
51
48
51
of Urban Services