14
www
155°
fear that this arbitrariness will, as time goes on, give rise to much dissatisfaction and misunderstanding; and it
makes it difficult to know what Residential Allowances to
attach to the scales for grades not yet dealt with.
13.
Morcover it will be noted that no Residential
Allowances are attached to the super-scale posts listed in
Part 2 of Appendix VI to General Orders. No doubt it was
felt that the extra cost of living in Hong Kong bears less
heavily on officers in receipt of higher salaries. With
this general thesis we entirely agree. The cost of living
here, so far as it is higher than in Africa, is due not so
much to the higher cost of individual articles as to the
cost of maintaining the minimum standard of living customary for Europeans. The expense of the customary minimum domestic establishment is naturally a larger proportion of
the salary of an officer on a medium salary than it is of a
senior officer's. The ideal "cost of living" or
"residential" allowance is therefore one which rises
systematically with salary up to a maximum and then tapers
off to nothing.
14. We suggest therefore that the whole system of
Residential Allowances be rocast and reduced to a uniform
formula. The formula we suggest for consideration is :
20% of basic salary in excess of £500, up to a maximum of
£100, subject to reduction by 40% of the amount by which
basic salary exceeds £100.
BASIC SALARY
This would work out as follows:-
RESIDENTIAL ALLOWANCE
£
500 or less
600
700
800
900
£
Nil
20
40
60
2880