SAS 213/1
18 February 1991
M S Hone Esq MBE
Chief Secretary ST HELENA
HKD 213//
RECEIVED IN BEGISTRY
SAM2134
DESK OFFICEM
INDEX
PA
அக்கு
Foreign & Commonwealth
Office
London SW1A 2AH
Telephone: 071-
10
(by fax)
Dear Michae
DEPENDENT TERRITORIES WORK PERMIT SCHEME
1.
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Pse I 28.2. to
a respore. Th
منصرم
You might recall from your preparatory briefing that towards the end of last year, we fought a successful rearguard action te
to Devent the abolition of the Dependent Territories Work Permit scheme, under which St Helena is granted 50 work permits annually for people to work as domestic staff. In the light of this, we naturally assumed that there would be no further threats to the scheme, and by definition to St Helena's interests, for some time to come.
201.
-sensed?
2. Since we know the importance of the Scheme to the island, it was therefore very disappointing to learn recently from Hong Kong Department that they seed - increasing pressure from among "those concerned" for the abolition of the entire Scheme. (The background to this seemed to be that although the FCO agreed last autumn to the abolition of the Hong Kong quota, the Home Office failed to make the necessary Parliamentary announcement. By the time they were in a position to do so, too many applications for Hong Kong work permits had been received. to make this approach acceptable.) In the interim, it has apparently emerged that there was no credible or defensive reason for abolishing only the Hong Kong quota, and that the entire scheme should be abolished by phased action over 3 to 4 years. We have yet to establish whom "those concerned" are, but will be pressing Hong Kong Department on this when we answer their recent minute (we do think, however, that the Department of Employment are sympathetic to St Helena's cause and are already considering ways of sweetening the pill if the worst comes to the worst). However, before we prepare that reply, we need to know why the Scheme is so important to St Helena, and what problems would be caused there by its abolition.
BC 1AAQ
UNCLASSIFIED
ho
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