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(i)
nightmare to administer.
And HMOCS officers could well
also argue that it was grossly unfair. Advice from
Hong Kong, Peking and UKRep JLG also suggests that the payments are not likely to be any more sensitive if they are paid at the time they are earned than if they are kept until later. At a practical level, the
establishment by HMG of individual bank accounts for
officers is unusual. There is also the issue of
whether HMOCS officers could argue that it was
unreasonable for HMG simply to keep the money in a bank
account. HMOCS officers who remain in the service of
the SAR will have earned the money and could argue that
they should be free to invest it as they think fit. There is also the question of tax on any interest on
the amounts. In all the circumstances, we believe that
we should drop this provision.
Paragraph 8. We have accepted Hong Kong's strong
advice that we should not volunteer in this statement
the possibility of meeting representatives other than the HMOCS Association. But the statement makes plain that it will be distributed widely, ie in practice to
contract officers who are potential HMOCS officers, as
well as to all members of HMOCS.
(j)
We have omitted paragraph 10 of the previous draft
which proposed that officers who originally served on
contract terms could only receive compensation on the
basis of service since the date of the officers'
enrolment in HMOCs. Thus the 240 contract officers who
might join HMOCS before 30 June 1992 could at maximum only gain five years of service. We now believe that
we should not include this for two reasons: first we
have in the past written to officers in this category
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