7.
256
See Seccional
paper ho
791929
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. Z
But they took no account of the fact that at a certain exchange point below 25/- the basic increase of 15% would begin to yield a larger sum in dollars than the officer was formerly getting.
18/8d. Under the pre-revision system
This point is about $1
**
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.
per month.
£1150 per annum @ $ 18/8d - $1,150
**
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 - 28/- although it must be obvious that if exchange rose again to $1 58/- payment of salaries at $1 2$/- would be absurdly generous. Equally hard
-
***
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 18/8d, i.e. until February 1935 and any hardship that then arose was speedily counterbalanced by the rise in the Treasury rate above 28/- (28/110 d 28/49, 25/27 in May, June and July.)
B.
The rates for conversion proposed in paragraph 3 are at