19 May 1993
нного пожу PA 8p1914
HKA 233/1
Foreign & Commonwealth
Office
(By Fax)
M J C Waters Esq
Civil Service Branch
Government Secretariat
Lower Albert Road
Hong Kong
London SWIA 2AH
Telephone: 071- 2702652
fear mire
HONG KONG HMOCS OFFICERS: HOME CIVIL SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES
Further to my letter of 19 April,
letter of 19 Apríl, have now obtained some advice about this matter from our Personnel Policy Department (PPD).
Unfortunately, it appears that the concessions for HMOCS officers and members of HM Forces relating to age and
educational qualifications, which are mentioned in Appendix C of the 1960 Command Paper "Service with Overseas Governments", no longer apply.
PPD have obtained copies of previous correspondence between the FCO, the ODA and the Civil Service Commission's Management and Personnel Office which shows that the age concessions for HMOCS officers in Civil Service Commission run recruitment schemes were abolished in 1982 and the concessions for educational qualifications were abolished in
1985.
It appears from the correspondence that the age concessions were abolished because they were rarely invoked in practice and because the need for them was diminishing as the Civil Service was progressively relaxing or abandoning their general age limits at this time.
It was felt appropriate to discontinue the educational qualification concessions because the main purpose of them - to enable applications to be made by people who were denied an earlier opportunity because of war service, and to help facilitate the return to civilian life of large numbers of people whose chosen careers were foreshortened by changes in successive governments' defence and colonial policies no
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