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the funds will be provided.
At the same time I think I should comment
briefly in this letter on the statement in the
second paragraph of your letter of the 16th June
to the effect that the Development Secretariat
in Hong Kong, owing to the nature of its activity,
would be a patently suitable charge on C. D. & W.
funds. I cannot agree that this is by any means
the case. The Development Secretariat in Hong Kong is not on all fours with Development Secretariats
in other colonies, in the sense that it is concerned
exclusively with development. You will see from the 1947/48 Estimates that it comprises a Directorate, and Agricultural Department, a Fisheries
Department, a Forestry Department and a Gardens
Department (we are now as you know proposing to add a Co-operation Department). Before the war all
these small existing Departments, many of them
virtually one-man Departments, were responsible
direct to the Colonial Secretariat, but the more
convenient and efficient arrangement has now been
adopted of bringing them all, under the direction
and supervision of one officer, the Secretary for
Development. Clearly however, notwithstanding this
re-organisation and the new nomenclature for the
Department, each of its component sub-Departments
is carrying on with its normal routine administrative
work: there are no other Departments outside the
Development Secretariat concerned with the routine administrative work of Forestry, Agriculture, Fisheries,
Gardens etc. as you find in a territory organised
such
on
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