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HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
two, three, four, nine and thirteen of this Bill propose to effect the necessary changes. I may say that the name of the chief officer of the police force is to be changed not in order to give him a more high-sounding title but in order to secure uniformity of title with the title of other officers of similar standing in many other Crown Colonies. Instances of Colonies where the title "Inspector General of Police" is used are Ceylon, the Straits Settlements, Jamaica, Trinidad, Mauritius, the Gold Coast, Nigeria, Fiji, Barbadoes and British Guiana. Barbadoes has a police force of 400, about one-fifth of ours, and British Guiana a population of 300,000, say a third of ours. It is advisable for general reasons to maintain uniformity on this point. There is also a special reason connected with recruiting. When young men are joining a service they naturally think of the chances of ultimate promotion and very often they have to judge those chances on insufficient information. It would be very unfortunate if Police Cadets joining the police services of the Crown Colonies in England were to be misled by any inferior sounding title of the head of the Hong Kong police force and thereby be induced either to post- pone Hong Kong to other Colonies or to refuse Hong Kong altogether. Those are the reasons why the title of the head of the force has been changed.
To return to the Bill. Clause 5 gives statutory recognition to the practice of having a probationary period for police recruits and provides that probationary officers may be discharged during that period if they prove unsatisfactory. I would draw the attention of hon. members to the fact that clause 5 has been altered since the Bill was circulated. The alteration is the insertion of certain words after the word "probationary period" in the proposed new sub-section (2) which will now read "such period of engagement may include a probationary period which shall not exceed six months." That limitation has been proposed by the Captain Superin- tendent of Police in the interests of the men themselves, as he feels that the head of the police ought to be able to decide within six months whether a man will be a satisfactory recruit or not and ought not to keep him hanging on for nine months or a year.
I should also mention that in clause 3 a slight alteration has been made to correct a slip in the words proposed to be inserted in section 3 after the words "Superintendents," and before the words "probationers." The words "Assistant Superintendents" now ap-
pear.
Clause 6 of the Bill gives the Governor power to grant to the European police a free passage in special cases before the completion of the usual statutory period of service. There, again, there is an alteration in the Bill. The clause originally read, "It shall be lawful for the Governor to grant a passage before the completion of four and a half years resident service." That should be "four years resident service." The words "and a half" have been deleted.
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