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transfer to the new scheme (most staff have five years in which to exercise the option).
4.
Separately, the Hong Kong Government has introduced a limited compensation scheme (at its own expense) for those superseded for promotion or compulsorily retired in the interests of accelerated localisation. This has been a normal pre-independence development elsewhere, where it has led to a wider scheme at independence to compensate certain pensionable expatriate officers for loss of career expectation and the Secretary of State's protection (se paragraph 6 below).
(d) Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service
5.
There are approximately 800 pensionable expatriate officers in Hong Kong, who by virtue of their terms of appointment are automatically members of Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service (HMOCS). HMOCS is a unified overseas civil service, created from the various colonial expatriate civil services under a 1954 White Paper. Under its terms HMG recognised certain long-term obligations towards HMOCS members in the process of decolonisation. These obligations concerned such issues as compensation for loss of career, a guaranteed sterling value for pensions, and re-employment elsewhere wherever practicable.
6.
Ministers considered in early 1985 the future treatment of HMOCS in Hong Kong. They concluded that while in general Hong Kong HMOCS members should be treated in a similar manner to HMOCS from other ex-colonies, no decisions on exact arrangements needed be reached till nearer 1997: where special arrangements were needed they should if at all possible be funded by HKG. The Hong Kong Government have been pressing us for an early decision on a General Compensation Scheme for members of Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service (HMOCS) in Hong Kong. A particular reason is that certain police officers on contract terms have been allowed a period, now extended again until March 1989, to opt between contract and permanent terms, the latter carrying with it membership of HMOCS. FCO Ministers have now decided, despite a collective Ministerial decision in the opposite sense in 1985, that it is the
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(