March 27, 1936
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT
513
Over Fourteen Million Dollars For Salaries
ac-
pointments Committee which deals | chiefly with promotions and with | the filling of vacancies as they occur. These are matters for which the Government must cept complete responsibility. The Committee does not deal with the creation of new posts or with sa- laries. These matters the Govern- ment is obliged by the Constitu- tion to refer to the Legislative Council. It does so refer them and the Legis ative Council after receiving such information as it may consider necessary to justify the proposals, must share with the Government the responsibility for the creation of new posts and for any changes of salary scales. The Government feels that the Honourable Member's proposal would not prove satisfactory either to this Council or to the Govern- ment.
as soon as commercial prosper- ity revives, and a cautious po.icy in the future should quickly re- store the equilibrium. Mean- while the Government is oblig- ed to take unusual and I hope temporary measures to reduce the deficit in its budget and these measures include a tem- porary levy on salaries and re- trenchment in staff and work where this can be accomplished without undue loss, together with an inroad into the surplus balances which have been built up to meet just such an emer- gency as has now come upon us. The Government agrees with the resolution standing in the name of the Honourable Member only in so far as it refers to present cir- cumstances. It cannot accept all the arguments advanced by Mr. Lo in support of his motion and it hopes that the Honourable
this Member after hearing to
planation wil be content with the very important ventilation of a matter and will not press his mo- tion to a division.
The Mover refers briefly and the seconder at some length the failure of the Government to Lx exchange forward or the whole of its sterling commitments for 1936 at the time when the budget for 1936 was under consideration. Even supposing such a course had been possible the Government could not properly have taken it The matter was very
fully dis- cussed at the time. The Govern- ment was in possession of exclu- sive information as to the prob- able course of exchange in the near future. To use that infor- mation to meet a possible budge- tary difficult at an extremely cri- tical moment for the Colony's cur - rency when a transaction such as that suggested might have preci- pitated a crisis and have caused detriment to others appeared to the Officer then administering the Government and to his advisers to be little short of immoral.
INFLATED BY COMMITMENTS
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GOVERNOR'S ADDRESS
ex-
Addressing the Council Sir An- drew Caldecott said:--
I want to thank the Honourable Member who proposed this Reso- lution for a most usefully critica! speech.
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If his particular points could not have been met to the very full extent that they have been met by
Honourable col- league, the Colonial Secretary, it would of course have signified that the authorities who framed our past budgets and the Coun- cillors
who passed them were either negligent, incapable or improvident. Happily for their reputation and for the Colony's well-being the picture is not in fact so black as the Honourable Member has painted it. Its gloomy tones, I am bold to be- lieve, are partly and largely the shadows of the dark clouds of a passing depression. But the
of pragmatic value criticism lies not in the answers
The Government, Sir, is now engaged in the difficult task f keeping its expenditure within its
Its means.
expenditure be happens at the moment to inflated by commitments on large public works which cannot eco- nomically be curtailed and some of its revenue producing assets are at the moment unrealizable. The sudden drop in exchange has | given to particular points but in disturbed the
general
it reaction which the
assure this evokes; and I can Council that the Government will, so long at any rate as I am asso- ciated with it, react to Mr. Lo's
main points; two
firstly, that staff must be kept at the mini- mum compatible, with efficiency; secondly, that the percentage of
equilibrium be-
tween revenue and expenditure but there is no reason for panic Or for uneconomic retrench-
nt. Our major commitments uld be completed by this time year, certain of our assets
do not appear in the bal- sheet should be realizable
local recruits must be kept at the maximum so compatib e.
TRUSTY WATCH-DOGS Coming from the Straits Settle- ments I am aiready accustomed to find in the Unofficial Members on Finance Committee the trusty watch-dogs of the tax-payer; this is an important function and none the less salutary because they may occasionally be found bark- ing up the wrong tree. But the mover of this resolution, in his two main points, is undoubtedly on the right scent and one that I have been following up myself.
Inter-Colonial comparisons are difficult. Variations in Exchange rate here, and the complexities of Municipal, Rural Board, Education Board and Hosptal Board finance in the Straits Settlements make a comparison between the two Far - Eastern Colonies particularly difficult. But if my calculation is correct that the Straits Settle- ments salaries bill, exclusive of
is pensions and allowances, 46 per cent of their 1936 budget and 56 per cent of their annually re- current expenditure, I should tell you also that their mounting pen- sions liability has been a matter of increasing concern to their Legislative Council, and that the ear-marking out of general sur- plus of a Pensions Reserve Fund has been recently mooted.
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WILL CONSIDER WELL While therefore I am not pre- pared to subscribe to the letter of this motion I have a grate- ful sympathy with its spirit, and I will say now on behalf of the Government that no vacant post on the establishment will be filled without examining the possibility of its retrenchment and that no officer will be en- gaged from overseas without first examining the possibility of a local recruitment. In the latter connection, how- ever, I desire to refer to passage in the Colonial Secretary's speech, the passage in which he told
that University-trained Chinese expect salaries equal to those drawn by European officers. That, surely, is an unreasonable expectation. European officers have to endure and
finance climatically enforced separations from their families, and it is an accepted and uncriticised principle in Malaya that at least 25 per cent of their salaries represents an overseas allowance. I fee! sure that the principle will prove
acceptable equally
here when people have had time to over.
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to