EMPLOYMENT
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workers do not have a rest day but it is customary to grant unpaid leave on request.
Retail Price Index. The Commerce and Industry Department compiles and publishes a monthly retail price index which covers a wide range of items found in the normal budget of both industrial and white-collar workers, calculated on the basis of a survey carried out in 1948. A base of 100 for March 1947 is used. Although Government has abandoned the payment of variable cost of living allowances based on this index, except for lower paid grades, some employers still follow the scales of cost of living allowances published monthly by the Labour Department.
In 1963 the index fluctuated between 120 and 125 with an average of 122.9. Details are shown in Appendix I.
Implementation of Government's earlier decision to conduct a budgetary survey of household expenditure with a view to prepar- ing a consumer price index, to reflect the expenditure patterns of a wider section of the community than the retail price index, was begun during the year. The survey is undertaken by a special unit in the Commerce and Industry Department. Mr G. C. Hamilton, Principal Assistant Colonial Secretary, who was appointed by Government in 1962 to conduct an interim survey on wages and salaries in Government service, published the report of his survey in April. With the information available, Mr Hamilton reached the conclusion that between 1958 and 1962 the cost of living for labourers and artisans had increased by 3.5 per cent and by five per cent for those living in uncontrolled premises. For white-collar staff, using the 1959 weights in the retail price index modified in certain respects, the cost of living since April 1959 was estimated to have increased by about five per cent for clerical staff, seven per cent for executive staff and nine per cent for professional staff.
LABOUR ADMINISTRATION
Labour Department. The rapid expansion of local industry since the war has been reflected in a corresponding growth of the Labour Department with 23 officers in 1947 and 177 in 1963, when it was reorganized to have a Factory Inspectorate separate from the Labour Inspectorate. The former is responsible for the technical aspect of factory inspection and the latter for the enforcement of social legislation e.g. on conditions of employment of women and