A (2) 8
# EXPENDITURE
## PERSONAL EMOLUMENTS
41. The Establishment Register kept by the Treasury was not in a form suitable as a basis for audit of Personal Emoluments which had therefore to be conducted by the laborious method of frequent reference to the vouchers of earlier months. A new form of register has been opened from 1st January 1931 which should prove more satisfactory.
42. The audit of Personal Emoluments has been rendered more than usually onerous by the adjustment in June and July of the whole of the salaries of the Civil Service consequent on the approval of the Secretary of State of the recommendations of the Salaries Commission appointed in 1928 to consider generally certain questions relating to the salaries of the Civil Service.
43. A large number of queries (157) were raised on these adjustments resulting in recoveries of overpayments amounting to over £100 in sterling and $800 in local currency. Apart from arithmetical errors many of these queries were concerned with the interpretation of the Commissioners' recommendations and in certain cases permanent reductions of the actual rate of salary were effected as the result of queries.
44. It was found, however, that the application of the revised salaries scheme presented many individual cases of difficulty and a Committee, on which this department was represented, was appointed to investigate them and in forwarding their report His Excellency The Governor sought the covering authority of the Secretary of State to their recommendations. These included the waiving of many refunds of overpayment which if insisted on would have entailed unreasonable hardship on individual officers. In his Despatch of 30th April 1931 the Secretary of State approved the action taken by the Governor on the Committee's report.
## MILITARY CONTRIBUTION
45. The details leading to the contribution in respect of the year 1930 are tabulated in Enclosure Q.
From this it will be seen that the contribution has not been calculated in accordance with the existing instructions of the Secretary of State.
46. Little object would be served here by recapitulating the various arguments leading to the Secretary of State's decision in 1925, full details of which are doubtless with you, but as no reply has been received to the request made by this Government in 1929 that the Secretary of State should reconsider his ruling it must for the present be assumed that his instructions in 1925 still stand. A further despatch has been forwarded (10th June 1931) on the subject.