copy.
Secretariat File No: 4174/46C.
No: 215
CONFIDENTIAL
Sir,
GOVERNMENT HOUSE,
HONG KONG.
12thSeptember, 1947.
With reference to previous correspondence resting with your despatch
No. 250 of 7th August, 1947, I have the honour to forward for your consideration Encl.
1. two copies of the report of the Hong Kong Salaries Commission, 1947.
2.
The Commission, as will be perceived from a study of the Report,
recommends that the principles enumerated in the White Paper Colonial No. 197 should
in general be accepted and applied to the public service in Hong Kong. It proposes
scales of salaries which have been determined according to the nature of the work
involved, and at rates which are applicable to locally recruited officers and which
take into account, so far as is practicable in present circumstances, the ruling
income levels in those classes of the community from which the public service is, or
may be, expected to be recruited. It has recommended expatriation pay for overseas
officers at rates which, it considers, should be sufficient to attract and retain
such officers. It proposes the abolition of the present practice of providing free
quarters for certain classes of officers, and of granting other officers rent
allowances and has incorporated into the revised salary scales an element for rent.
It proposes that an economic rent should be charged if Government quarters are
provided. The Commission has recognised that a substantial improvement has taken
place, since the reoccupation, in the standard of living, of the lower grades of the
public sc.vice and of manual labourers generally, and it proposes that this improvc-
ment should be maintained in the Government Service by a proportionately greater
increase in basic salaries than for the middle and upper grades. It recommends, in
order to allow for the permanent decrease in the purchasing power of money, that
there should be an increase of 200% on lower grade salaries, falling to 30% on
salaries of about $1,000 per month and 20% on salaries of about $1500 per month, with
a flat rate increase above that figure. In addition, it has added one sixth to exis-
ting salary scales in order to assimilate house allowance privileges, but on the
higher alaries the increase is proportionately smaller.
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
A. CREECH JONES, M. P.