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against an estimated expenditure of thirty-two and one quarter,
i.e. a deficit of three and one-half millions; and this moreover on a reckoning of sterling commitments at $1 = 1 15/3d. It is
estimated that the Colony's surplus funds on the 1st January will
total approximately eleven and one-quarter million and, while I
am not blind to the fact that the main utility of a surplus is to
carry an Administration through lean years, I do not deem it
prudent (and my advisers are at one with me in this view) to let
the level down to below eight millions on the next year's working.
I have therefore had under critical review various items of
personal emoluments with a view to cutting down rent, language and
other allowances which appear to have been somewhat promiscuously
and lavishly granted in the past. As regards the future I am
recommending in a separate despatch an adaptation of the African
basis of remuneration to Hong Kong appointments but the present
necessity is to secure an immediate economy in the cost of
personnel. With this end in view the Colonial Treasurer
prepared a programme of curtailments in allowances which on the
31st July I discussed with all Heads of Departments.
8.
At this meeting it was impressed very strongly upon
me that the Service would prefer the continued imposition of a
salary levy to any interference with allowances. Many arguments
were adduced but the two principal ones were:-
(a) that there should be equality of sacrifice on the basis
of pre-slump emoluments; this would be effected by a salary
levy but not by docking allowances which some were drawing
and others not; and
(b) that the public should know that Government servants were
"doing their bit" in the depression, and a salary levy would
command popular appreciation whereas a reduction of allowances
would pass either unnoticed or insufficiently comprehended.
The force of both these arguments must be admitted and, in view of