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(ii) If the people of the Colony are to man their own services, it is a matter of the first importance that they should be trained to do this with sufficient competence. A consideration of the extent and the limitation of facilities within the Colony for professional and technical training hardly comes within our terms of reference, but it is a matter that we were compelled to discuss in our attempt to assess reasonable rates of pay. The University has trained doctors who have had good careers in the Colony, in Malaya and in China: it has trained engineers who have done well elsewhere than in the Public Works Department, in which none has as yet found permanent employment. The Technical and Trade Schools are in process of development and a commencement only has been made with the adequate training of teachers. It appears to às that the time has come for Government to lay down explicitly the qualifications that shall be required in future for appointment locally to its technical and professional services, that Government departments should undertake the responsibility for providing professional and other apprenticeships which must supplement and make effective the work that educational institutions can do. We would venture to ask for the early consideration of this issue by Government, as we are convinced that it is on this that the success or failure of the new Colonial policy will depend. The great increase of applications from inhabitants of the Colonies for admission to technical and professional courses in England is already a difficult problem. Training institutions in Great Britain cannot accept more than a fraction of such applications and it is now accepted policy that the Colonies must equip them- selves to give the basic general and technical training in their own territories and that institutions in Great Britain hereafter should limit admission to such people as have completed basic courses in their own homelands and are thought to be competent to take higher courses of study or of practical laboratory or workshop training. Hong Kong already can do much but a very great expansion of training facilities is needed at once.
APPLICATION OF REVISED SALARY SCALES
29. A necessary corollary of all this is that having proposed what wė regard as adequate salary scales for properly trained and qualified men, we cannot recommend the indiscriminate application of these scales to all existing holders of posts. Intelligent application of knowledge gained through long experience frequently has proved of greater value than specific training, though we would hesitate to assert that this is universally true. It will therefore be for the Government to decide what proportion of the new rates of pay should be permitted to officers technically unqualified and what weight should be given in such cases to the value of experience. On this matter the Commission is not competent to make specific proposals, but we cannot but be aware that the rates we propose are bound to be found too high in specific cases, just as we are aware that it is dangerous to pay, as at present, at coolie rates of pay, men who are in charge of the investigation of applications for free food issues. We can only suggest tentatively that apart from exceptional cases no unqualified officer should be allowed to progress more than two thirds of the way along the incremental scales proposed for qualified officers and that where local train- ing facilities exist and unqualified officers are in the early stages of their official careers, an efficiency bar should be inserted in the scale beyond which they cannot pass until they obtain the requisite qualifications.
EMPLOYMENT OF LOCAL RESIDENTS
30.
In the new basic salaries we are proposing, we have contemplated the employment of genuine Hong Kong candidates whose roots are in the Colony and we recommend that if such candidates are available with the necessary qualifications they should be given preference over other candidates who come into the Colony from outside.
INCORPORATION OF ELEMENT FOR RENT IN BASIC SALARIES
31. The salary scales we propose include an element for rent, and where quarters are provided by Government we recommend an appropriate deduction from salary. We are of the opinion that the present diversity of conditions of service under which some officers receive free quarters, some are charged 6% of salary, some 12% and others receive a contribution towards their rent in the form of a rent allowance, is undesirable and should be abandoned. This subject is more fully discussed in Chapter IV. It suffices to say at this juncture that the element we have incorporated into basic salaries in respect of rent
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