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To
ORIGINAL
23
Public Works Office,
Hongkong, 23 June, 1920.
The Right Honourable
LORD VISCOUNT MILNER P.C.,G.C.B.,G.C.M.G. &c.
His Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies.
Your Lordship,
1.Te, your humble petitioners, Executive and Assistant
Engineers of the Public Works Department of Hongkong, much regret
the necessity of having to petition Your Lordship for serious
reconsideration of the Scale of our Emoluments.
2. In order that Your Lordship may appreciate the responsibili-
ties which devolve upon your petitioners in the carrying out of the
duties of their offices, may we acquaint Your Lordship of the fact
that last year's Expenditure on Public Works Recurrent and
Extraordinary, for which your petitioners were responsible, amounted
to $3,057,512.82. Your petitioners duties are not only defined by
this huge expenditure but include the administration of the
Buildings' Ordinance and other offices and in addition the con-
sideration of numerous schemes many of which entail an immense
amount of work.
3. We, your humble petitioners are grateful and thank Your
Lordship for the temporary assistance by way of free passages and
the grant, under certain stringent conditions, of house rent
allowance, but we humbly submit that the New Scale of Salaries,
expressed in Dollars, taking into account this temporary assistance, is not comparable with the increased cost of living in this Colony
since 1914; nor is the increased Sterling Salary for leave and
of living pension purposes comparable with the increased coat
in England the new Scale of Salaries being, on an average,
35.83 per centum over the Scale of Salaries paid in 1914.
increase on the new scale over that in force in June 1914
only
The
(1).
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