2.
45
Tonnage surveyed by these officers in 1936 amounted to
436,699 or, allowing for three officers absent on leave
in any year, to 36,391 tons per Surveyor.
To take
4. An attempt has been made in Table B, forwarded
with the petition from the Government Marine Surveyors, to
calculate a Colonial Recruitment Inducement Factor in
order to achieve a comparison between the salaries paid
to Marine Surveyors in the United Kingdom and in Hong Kong.
Although that procedure is a useful guide in principle
any exact calculation of such a factor seems to me
impossible in practice owing to the many differences in
other conditions of employment between the various grades
of public officers in Hong Kong and the grades selected
as corresponding grades in the United Kingdom.
one of many instances, the grade into which an administrative
officer goes on joining the Hong Kong Service is that in
which he may expect to stay for at least half his official
career, whereas the grade entered by an administrative
officer in the United Kingdom is one in which he is
expected to stay only about seven or eight years, so that
a comparison of the maxima of the two grades is deceptive.
Nor am I entirely convinced by the comparison of the
salaries and prospects of Marine Surveyors under the
Board of Trade since the higher staff of the Board is
charged with supervisory and consultative work, e.g. in
the control of district offices and the conduct of
examinations, of a character which hardly arises in
Hong Kong.
5.
Nevertheless although the exact comparisons
attempted in the petition are, in the nature of things, impossible, I feel that there is good reason for regarding
the