1982.3
TREASURY CHAMBERS,
GREAT GEORGE STREET,
LONDON, S.W.1
Tel. No. Whitehall 1234
NATIONAL
SCHEM
BE DISASTED
MED
Your Reference 53723/47-49
Treasury Reference
Dew Seel
11th.arch, 1948
Copies sent to Accts. D. 22
We spoke on Saturday morning about the difficult question of the cost of living allowance payable to the higher grades in the Civil service in Hong Kong. The present position is that where basic salaries are £750 per annum or above, you are prepared to pay some £318. 15. 0 per annum (for married men with children). In Lalaya, with which, in our view, an appropriate relationship should be established, the present, if temporary, arrangement is that for salaries of £700 per annum and upwards, the allowance shall be £224 per annum (married officers).
2. I need not go here into the question whether there should be a "tapering off" as salaries reach the top levels in the high grades. We are prepared to accept that for the present there shall be no more than a "flattening off", and that the whole question of cost- of-living allowances shall be examined by the Boards of Reviewers which, we understand, are to be set up. The point about which we feel such difficulty, as I have explained, is that, owing no doubt to the lack of effective co-ordination between the Salaries Commissions in Hong Kong and alaya, Hong Kong's cost of living allowance for the higher grades stands about 50% higher than that at present ruling in Malaya, yet such infor- mation as we have at our disposal (i.e. the budgets which have been submitted in connection with the local overseas allowance for Service Departments and the normal Foreign Service Allowance) shows that if anything Hong Kong is rather less expensive to live in than Singapore.
G. F. Seel, Esq., C. .G.,
Colonial Office.
/Once