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HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
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Therefore, if you add the total of $2,643,000.00 to the total of $11,457,821.00 you get the stupendous sum of $14,100,821 as the full bill for salaries. Another way of stating this position is that out of approximately twenty-three and a half million "available expenditure" (of which nearly three and a half million is earmarked for Public Works Extraordinary), the sum of over fourteen million is spent on salaries; in other words, 60 per cent. is spent on salaries, leaving the sum of just over nine and a half million to cover the whole cost of Civil Administration, including Social Services and the thousand and one items of essential public expenditure. Need I say more to show that the existing Civil Service is too costly for the Colony to bear? Is it exaggeration of language to say that, unless this crushing burden of salaries is substantially reduced, all hopes of effecting substantial improvements in the Colony must indefinitely be relegated to the realm of fanciful dreams?
I am aware that Government has, year after year, expressed its intention to retrench. For instance during the Budget Debate in 1931 His Excellency Sir William Peel said: "When I came here, I was impressed by the large number of European staff, particularly in the subordinate grades. Steps are being taken to replace some of these gradually by local officers, though it is a step which must be taken with caution. Government is ready to give local recruits every chance, and it will be for them to prove that such confidence is not misplaced. This policy can only be followed if local recruits prove that they possess the necessary integrity and efficiency. If they fail to do this, they and the Colony cannot complain if we have to revert to the system which has obtained hitherto. The matter lies in their hands." (Hansard, page 191).
In the Budget Debate in 1934 His Excellency Sir William Peel said: "We are, however, carrying out a scheme of a local branch of the Senior Clerical and Accounting Staff and are endeavouring to train local sanitary inspectors. Further, I hope that it may be possible to train local nursing sisters and so reduce the large number of sisters recruited from England. I propose to go into this question with my Honourable friend, the Director of Medical and Sanitary Services." (Hansard, page 187).
In the Budget Debate in 1935 the Hon. the Acting Colonial Secretary said: "The Government has fully and frankly accepted that policy of replacing wherever possible European by Asiatic employees, but it must be evident that such a policy can show its full effect only gradually." (Hansard, page 201).
And, yet, what is the actual result? I must confess that if any result has been achieved it is so disappointingly small that I am quite unable to discern it! In his answers to my questions on the 16th January, 1936, the Hon. the Colonial Secretary stated that the number of European Civil Servants employed rose from 647 in 1923, to 975 in 1935; that as regards the European Senior Clerical and