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Conditions of Service on various grades in all the government departments. At that time we pleaded for ten senior posts but were persuaded to accept four by the then Registrar Mr. Barnett who intimated at a meeting with the Committee Members that more senior posts would be created after the implementation of the new scheme of functionalisation (A copy of the notes of meeting on 29.8.81 is attached hereto and marked Appendix 1).
Mr. Barnett however did not honour his words despite repeated demands made by us for expansion of our senior rank. In 1983, we formally wrote (Appendix 2) to Mr. Registrar Barnett for the creation of more senior posts and upgrading a number of posts in the plea courts, Labour Tribunal and Coroners' courts. The Registrar's reply (Appendix 3) was that he would study our proposals in detail in due course, but the proposals we made in that letter have not up to the moment been seriously followed up. In the meantime, the Chinese Language Officers kept expanding their chief and senior ranks, thereby increasing the disparity in the opportunities for promotion to higher ranks between the Court Interpreters and the Chinese Language Officers.
In 1984, in response to the outcry of dissatisfaction by the Court Interpreters over the unfair treatment, the then Chief Justice, Sir Denys Roberts, directed that an overall review be conducted on the career structure of the Court Interpreters with a view to improving our prospects. Such review exercise was confirmed by Mr. Perrior, the Acting Registrar at a meeting with the Executive Committee members of the Association in June 1985 (Appendix 4). However, for reasons unknown to us, His Lordship's direction was somehow never carried out and the whole thing ended with a smoke.
One year later, on seeing that nothing had been done by the management for our betterment; we again wrote (Appendix 5) to the Registrar Mr. Barnett for the creation of a number of senior posts for difficult and complex cases like the Carrian which we are sure Your Excellency is well aware of. Our request was rejected by Mr. Barnett who did not agree with us that the Carrian case was difficult for the Court Interpreter (Please refer to Appendix 6). We respected his decision and argued no further. The Carrian case was subsequently assigned to an interpreter at the bottom of the Class I list. We would like to add here that to stress the importance he attached to the Carrian case the Chief Justice specially appointed a Justice of Appeal, Mr. Justice Barker for its trial. Queen's counsel from London and a number of leading counsel from the local legal profession were assigned by both the Crown and the parties involved to handle their case; the Attorney General was prudent enough to assign no less than two Senior Chinese Language Officers and a number of Chinese Language Officers I for the preliminary inquiry of that case. Mr. Registrar Barnett however saw fit to do a big man's job with a boy's weapon.
Having failed in our plea for the creation of senior posts for difficult cases, we submitted a representation to the Secretary for Civil Service in November 1985 (Appendix 7)
7) for upgrading the High Court Interpreters. The Civil Service Branch sat on our paper
paper without doing anything on it until early 1987 when a survey on our grade was started but the methodology of which they refused to disclose. We felt that we were entitled to know the methodology used in the survey and we did at one stage protest against their refusal to disclose the same. They ignored our protest