- 5.
Additional cost of new basic salaries over and above present estimate provision:
Increase in grants to grant-in- aid schools necessitated by application of new scales (in- cluding cost of living allowance)
to the staffs of these establishments:
$14,568,647
1,025,000
$15,593,647
Net reduction in cost of living allowances:
Totul increased cost over and above estimate provision:
6.424.318
$9,169,329
15.
Although the above figure of approximately $9,000,000 represents the
net estimated increase over and above the current provision for personal emoluments
and cost of living allowance, the actual cost of the recommendations is really
$14,000,000, because, as explained above, $5,000,000 has already been included in
the Estimates as a token provision to nect part of the cost of the recommendations
of the Salaries Commission. Part of this has already been utilised to meet the
cost of the interim recommendation of the Cormission for an increase in the cost
of living allowance, which was in the nature of an advance instalment of the cost
of the general revision. Despite the fact that no tax due under the New Inland
Revenue Ordinance has yet been collected, revenue up to the 29th August totalled
$53,809,885. Thus it can be confidently assumed that, excluding any receipts from
direct taxation, revenue for the first six months of the financial year will
exceed half the estimated total revenue figure of $109,839,750. Even if economic
conditions deteriorate considerably during the second half of the financial year it
should be possible to find the additional $9,000,000 which is required to meet the
cost of this proposed salary revision in respect of the present financial year,
plus whatever sum may be necessary to meet the cost of any retrospective adjustment
which may be approved.
16.
The Commission's recommendation that the now scales should be made
effective as from the 1st January, 1947, has been the occasion of much anxious thought
in the light of undertakings which have been given in the past. In December,
1946, a strike of the Harbour Department floating staff was averted only by a promise
of the Acting Colonial Secretary in the course of a personal interview that their