3
า
9.
It will thus be seen that the Commission's unanimous Report supplics,
in accordance with its wide terms of reference, concrete recommendations covering
in detail all immediate problems in regard to the remuneration of the public service
in Hong Kong, and offering valuable guidance for the future recruitment, training,
conditions of service, and discipline of Government servants in the Colony.
Throughout, it is apparent that the Commission has made every effort to apply the
principles enumerated in the White Paper, Colonial 197.
10.
After careful consideration of this Report and with the advice of
Executive Council on all its aspects, I endorse its proposals generally and
recommend them for your early approval in principle, with the exception of those in
paragraphs 162, 164 and 165 relating to pensionability, to which I wish to give
further consideration.
There may be more points of detail on which I may find it
necessary to address you further after all heads of departments have been consulted,
but I consider the increases suggested generally reasonable, as representing the
minimum upon which the Government my hope to retain its servants against the
counter attraction of commercial houses. Moreover, as is shown in later paragraphs,
11.
It
the Government is in a position to bear the cost of the extra expenditure involved.
It has been impressed upon me that the new permanent rates of pay, added
to the temporary high cost of living allowances now recommended, are designed together
to provide reasonable minimum total emoluments for the various grades of the service
at present, and that any downward variation in either quantity in this equation would
produce less total pay for cach officer than the Commission considers essential.
follows that, until the cost of living falls, any general alteration downwards
in the recommended rates of permanent emoluments must be accompanied by a correspond-
ing upwards alteration in the rates of high cost of living allowance and vice versa.
The principles on which the Commission has recommended the employment of
expatriate officers and the payment of expatriation pay are fully set out in Chapter
3 of the Report. It has been explained to me that the Chinese members of the
Commission felt very strongly that the principle of expatriation pay must not be so
applied as to amount in substance to raising the salaries of expatriate officers
doing the same work as local officers and that accordingly, if the total emoluments
of an expatriate officer were greatly to exceed those of a local officer
performing the same work, either the former wore excessive or the latter inadequate,
12.