Sec. 4/1662/47.
SAVINGRAM
To the Secretary of State for the Colonies.
From the Governor, Hong Kong.
Date
No....
November, 1949.
STAFF.
Page 2 -
21
of the additional 6 Senior Health Inspector posts, which were approved with a view to providing adequate promotion prospects for the all-round man as well as for the specialist. Promotions to the new posts have now been made. Among the petitioners are some of the officers who have recently been promoted to the Senior Health Inspector grade, but you will note that the petition contains a request for extension of the scale with effect from 1st January, 1947.
3.
The present number of expatriate European Health Inspectors Grade I is 16, all of whom are very favourably placed in seniority for further advancement; and with an establishment of 12 Senior Health Inspector posts it is clear that their promotion prospects are extremely good. I have under consideration the provision of one additional post of Chief Health Inspector in connection with the Estimates for 1950/51.
4.
The grading of the salary scales for the European Health Inspectorate which was recommended by the Salaries Commission is, in my opinion, adequate, and I am unwilling to agree that any variation should be made. A concession in this respect would be followed by immediate demands for similar treatment by Police Sub-Inspectors Grade I, Prison Officers Grade I, Inspectors Grade I, Bailiffs, Supreme Court, and other
Revenue similar grades. I recommend, therefore, that the petitioners should be informed that an extension of their salary scale cannot be approved.
5.
In connection with the Draft Estimates for 1949/50 I considered a proposal for the transfer to the Sanitary Department and Urban Council of that part of the Health Inspectorate which was engaged on duties regarded as among the functions of that department. Before the war the main part of the Health Inspectorate came under the Urban Council and the transfer of the entire Inspectorate staff to the Medical Department was undertaken in 1940 with a view to achieving closer co-operation between the two departments on health matters affecting the community generally. increasingly evident that this arrangement, whereby
It became the Inspectorate staff was under the administrative control of one department, but the majority of the staff were, in effect, working for another department, was difficult to justify. Accordingly, I approved a
The decision was
return to the pre-1940 position. taken early this year and as it was too late, by the time the details had been worked out, to reflect it in the Estimates for 1949/50, it was effected by administrative direction.
This explains why the
attached petition from the European Health Inspectors is addressed from the Sanitary Department and Urban Council.
KSK/LF.