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equality in respect of the period of leave in England the Hongkong officer requires from two to three weeks longer leave than his colleague in Malaya.
3.
I would make the leave rules applicable to all European officers. At present there are separate regulations for the Police, and again separate regulations for all subordinate officers who have hitherto been granted free passages; their allowance of leave being less liberal, by reason of the grant of passages, than the allowance to officers who paid their own passages. Now that free passages have been granted to all European officers, there is no longer any ground for differentiation.
4.
Under the authority of Mr. Long's telegram of
the 24th December, 1918, all subordinate officers are for the time being receiving full pay leave, to meet the increased cost of living at home; but the suggestion in that telegram, that the leave so granted should be regarded as commuted pay leave to be debited against leave earned in the future, ia hardly practicable. A man returning from nine months' full pay leave would have to serve nine years on account of that leave, and it would take him a further nine years to earn another nine months' period. I propose that in every case the leave due to an officer from the commencement of his service should be calculated, and that he should be debited with the half or full pay leave already taken, one month's full pay leave to count as two months' half pay leave: with the proviso that the first three months of each period of long leave taken will be written off as vacation leave. For example, an officer has served the necessary period of 5 years and has been granted nine months' half pay leave, and he has served a second like period and has recently returned from nine months' full pay leave. He would be credited with 21 months' half pay leave
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