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16. We consider that after six years completed service is a reasonable stage at which an officer might expect that his pay should be sufficient to enable him to lead, in decent comfort, the ordinary domestic married life of his grade in society and we have kept this principle in view in all the recommendations which we have made.
17. Related in some respects to this question of the stage at which male officers should be enabled to marry on their pay, is the difference in the rate of salary paid to male and female employees of Government respectively.
It was urged strongly before us that as women, particularly those serving under the Education department, are doing the same work as male officers, they should be practically on the same scale of pay.
They further argued that, although they would not, in the ordinary course of events, have to support a family, many of them had parents and other relatives partially dependent on them. But we think this latter argument answered by the fact that this liability is shared by many male officers. We have carefully considered the case present- ed to us on behalf of female employees of Government, but we have come to the conclu- sion that there are fundamental differences between the position of a male and a female servant of Government. To give a single illustration of these differences it is not within the immediate contemplation of Government to create a Widowers' and Orphans' Pensions Scheme.
18. A very general complaint was laid before us of the stagnation in promotion which occurs when an officer has reached the top of an incremental scale. It appears to us that the object of an incremental scale is to reward the increasing value of an officer's services and to mitigate the condition of stagnation, but a point is reached when the bene- fit derived by Government from the services of an officer in the particular post is fully re- warded by the maximum salary attached to it. Provided the proportion between higher and lower posts is adequate, it is but fair that an officer should await promotion to higher post for an increase in pay.
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There may, however, easily arise cases when an officer's promotion is interfered with owing to his special qualifications in a particular office; in such cases it is mani- festly unfair that the value of his services should operate against his selection for promo- tion, and the consequential receipt of an increased salary; and we think that, if he does not receive merited promotion for this reason, he should be compensated by a personal allowance which should be pensionable.
19. Another general grievance was the size of increments and the length of time that it takes an officer to reach the top of the scale. We think that the grievance is in many cases justified. Also, having regard to what we have said in paragraph 16 of this Report as to the time at which an officer should be entitled to find himself in a position to marry, we are of opinion that when he reaches that stage of his service, the increments received by him should as a rule be further steepened for a period of 2 years. In this connection we may mention that existing increments appear to have been fixed without any due regard to principle. In some cases junior officers draw larger increments than their seniors, while material differences appear amongst officers of similar standing. In our recommendations on this matter we have kept in mind the points referred to in this paragraph.
20. It has also been represented to us that some compensation is due to Senior Officers, when they retire, in respect of advantages which have been conferred on mem- bers of the public service generally in late years; such as free passages on leave, rent allowances, charge allowances and exchange compensation. We are unable to recommend that this representation should be given effect to. In the first place it would certainly be followed by similar requests in analogous cases which it might be difficult to differen- tiate; and in the next place, these very great advantages have been granted to meet con- ditions as they arose and were not intended as admissions that they ought to have been granted previously as a matter of right dealing between Government and its servants.