278
Officer, or as Assessor of Rates, or in a Second Grade appointment his remuneration is correspondingly increased. The Passed Cadet on receiving a permanent appointment draws £420 less some £17 Widows' and Orphans' Contribution, that is a total salary of £403 per annum. Further, if he is called upon to act in an appointment, half the salary of his own post amounts to only £193 (£210 less £17) compared with £205 (£175 less £14 plus £54) the half salary of a Passed Cadet.
4. In view of the dollar salaries attached to the posts of Assistant Land Officer, District Officer, and Head of the Sanitary Department, which have been created subsequently to the introduction of the sterling salaries scheme, it may be inferred that the higher dollar salaries attached to the two lower grades of Cadet Appointments are not considered to be excessive, and this supposition is further confirmed by the fact that, when last year memoranda were submitted by the Civil Service on the subject of the rise in exchange, relief was granted to the more highly paid officers on dollar salaries on the ground that those salaries had become inadequate. It may also be noted that the Assistant Director of Public Works, after appointment on the lower Sterling Salary, was permitted to draw the equivalent of the higher dollar salary of his post, and a similar privilege was accorded to one at least of the Sanitary Inspectors.
5. In these circumstances I venture to request that I may be permitted to draw a salary equivalent to that which will be drawn by any of the Cadets senior to myself who may in the future act in the new post, namely at the rate of £540 rising to £630 a year. I am aware that by comparison with salaries paid for similar services in England this rate may appear excessive. It is not more than a sufficient remuneration, having regard to the expenses of living in Hong Kong, is upheld both by the consensus of official opinion in the Colony during recent years and by the...
Page 279