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CHAPTER XI.
CONVERSION TO NEW RATES OF PAY.
Date from which the recommendations should take effect.
195.
After considering the hardships that officers have suffered since the resumption of civil government and the evidence that some have had to use up savings and others have incurred debts, we believe that there is a strong case for the retrospective application of these recommendations. In view in particular of the heavy cost of our recommendations we are forced to conclude that the revised scales ought not to be introduced with retrospective effect from a date carlier than 1st January, 1947.
Persons to whom retrospective benefits should be granted.
196.
We recommend that retrospective benefits should only be granted to officers who are in the service of the Hong Kong Government at the date on which the final approval of our recommendations is announced. We would exclude from this recommendation those Police officers who wore offered and accepted the opportunity of retirement before they had reached the age of 45. In addition we consider that officers who have resigned or have been discharged from the service between 1st January, 1947, and the date of the announcement should not benefit but we recommend that officers who were in the Colony on duty on 1st January, 1947 and who have subsequently died, retired in the normal course of events or been invalided should have their salarios, death gratuities, gratuities or pensions recalculated as if they had been on the revised scales at the time of death, invaliding or retiremont.
Rules for convorsion.
197.
Although we have worked out detailed tables to show how various classes of officers at various incremental points on existing scales should bo allowed to convert to the new scales, we have not included these tables in our Report, because we consider that the details of conversion can be more easily worked out when final approval of the new scales has been received. We recommend however that where the old and the new scales are of comparable length, the following rules should be adopted: -
(i) Where an officer on an incremental scale
has the necessary qualifications to entitle him to convert fully to the now scalo appropriate to his grado, and has passed all the prescribed intervening efficiency bars, he shall receive the same number of increments to the maximum limit in the now scale as he has already received in his old scalo.
(ii) Where an officer has not the necessary
qualifications which it is contemplated that an officer in his grade should in future on entry possess or obtain subsequently to entry, the Government should exercise its discretion whether the same number of increments as he has carned in his old scale should be accorded him up to the maximum limit in his new scale, provided of coursc
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