Enclosure 6.
500
HONGKONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
THE
15TH MARCH, 1894.
on the payment of leave salaries If exchange improved the additional expenditure would proportionately decrease; if it worsened, the additional expenditure would proportionately increase. The reason why the saving on the pay. ment of leave salaries is as determinable amount is that it is not possible to estimate beforehand how many officers will take leave during a given period, nor what lengths of leave they will take, nor which of them will spend their leave in countries having a gold currency. The fact that a large number of officers have declined the offer, because they considered it inadequate, does not affect the propriety of
CIVIL SERVICE AND THE FALL IN THE
DOLLAR The COLONIAL SECRETARY-I rise to move the resolution which stands in my name. It has reference to the proposal of the Secretary of State that those of the civil servants who are domiciled in countries having a gold currency should, on certain conditions, be granted some compensation in view of the serious and continuous fall in exchange. The Council may probably be aware that similar forms have been offered to the civil servants in the Straits Settlements; that a somewhat more favourable offer has been made to the service in Ceylon; and that the civil servants in India-where, by the way, a considerable deficit is anticipated on the budget-have already been allowed those who desire to avail themselves of it to do so. The offer has been conditionally made by the Secretary of State to each officer individually, and the refusal of it by some officers affords us reason for withholding it from others who wish to accept it. The proposal of the Secretary of State has not been evoked by any complaint on the part of the civil service in Hongkong: it has been spontaneously made by his lordship, presumably from a sense of justice and in pursuance, more or less, of the action taken in other silver using colonies and in India. If carried into effect, it will afford those who benefit by it partial compensation, but it will not make their salaries nearly equivalent to what it has on various previous occasions been decided that they should be. To give an illustration of my meaning: By the civil establishment they draw salaries aggregating $378,744 Of Ordinance of 1860 the Colonial Secretary's salary was fixed at £1,500
of
per annum,
$251,597 are unwilling to accept the proposal. The proposed arrangement will give him a while 46 officers with aggregate salaries amounting to $95,301 wish to accept it, and 10 officers with salaries amounting to $31,846 are at present absent on leave and have as yet had no opportunity of expressing their wishes. The additional annual expenditure involved in giving effect to the proposal, in the case of those officers who wish to accept it-exclusive of the officers now on leave, whom as yet it has not been possible to consult, and some of whom may necessarily be affected hereafter-is therefore on the basis of a 2s exchange, $23,825 less the indeterminable saving
dinate office than the one which I am now pri-