6.
41
7.
There has been no such general improvement
in the conditions of service of the home-recruited staff,
who are much more affected by the fall in exchange, and
whose position is now alleged to be worse than it was after
the Sterling Salaries Revision of 1920. It is true that in
some Departments the 1920 rates have since been modified,
but this is attributable to the fact that in these cases the
1920 rates were never adequate and cannot be regarded in the
light of adjustments to meet an increasingly higher cost of
living.
8.
The only general concessions which have been
made since 1920 are the grant of remittance privileges to
officers with families in England and the extension of the
rent allowance scheme to officers living in hotels or
boarding houses. The remittance concession was necessitated
by the rapid fall in the sterling value of the dollar during
the autumn of 1926 and it was only intended as an interim
measure. It obviously benefits only one class of officers
and, though these were the officers most urgently in need of
help at the time, the effect of a continued low dollar is
now reflected to a much greater extent in the cost of living
in the Colony, apart from the question of actual remittances.
The substitution, therefore, of a wider scheme of relief, sud
as the downward extension of the sliding scale of privileged
20112/26 rates of exchange suggested in your telegrams of 5th November,
20864/26
1268126 1926, and 16th November, 1926, and your despatch No.57 of
25th February, 1927, urgently needs consideration.
9.
The present sliding scale allows an increase
of 30 cents in the dollar value of the pound sterling for
every fall of 4d. in the exchange rate of the dollar and has
s.d. proved suitable for variations of the dollar above 2/6; but
the