7.
256
See Sessional
paper ho
7091929
capital locked up in the present Gaol and Hospital sites, the Naval Arsenal Yard and the Kowloon Tsai development.
9.
Inasmuch as any cut in sterling salaries is likely to evoke appeals to the Salaries Report 1929/30 it may be useful to re-examine the relevant sections of that Report, namely paragraphs 7-13. The Commissioners' "endeavour to retain to an officer the "number of dollars he (was then) drawing" under the pre-revision sliding scale plus a scale of allowances subsequently added. To achieve this the Commissioners first added 15% to basic salary.
Then taking exchange at $1 - 25/- they recommended a High Cost of Living Allowance of 15 on that.
the married officer would have received for his £1000 per annum the sum of $1,000+ 18% or $1,180 and the unmarried officer $1,000+ 9% or $1,090.
£1150 per annum $ 1$/8d = $1,150
per month.
In fact the only contribution of the Commissioners to the cardinal problem of exchange was to lay it down that payment should not be made at less than $1
be obvious that if exchange rose again to $1
25/- although it must
58/- payment of
Equally hard
salaries at $1 2$/- would be absurdly generous.
to justify was the payment of sterling salaries at current rate when the dollar stood below 18/-
From these considerations two conclusions may be drawn
in connection with the present issue :-
A.
Complaint against the withholding of the High Cost of Living allowance was not justified until the Treasury rate rose well above 19/8d, i.e. until February 1935 and any hardship that then arose was speedily counterbalanced by the rise in the Treasury rate above 28/- (25/1 26/49, 25/2 in May, June and July.)
16
B. The rates for conversion proposed in paragraph 3 are at