PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
C.O. 882
9PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
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An officer who wished for an extension of leave merely for his own convenience
might be allowed leave without pay, provided that he could be spared without difficulty.
IV) An officer should be allowed to take a few days' (say ten or fourteen) casual leave in each year without its being counted against his vacation leave. Such cusual leave -hould be grantable by the head of the officer's department, who would be responsible for string that his duties were discharged satisfactorily during his absence without est to the Government. This privilege would be greatly valued by the service and shoulf. I think he granted even if the present arrangements as to leave are left otherwise unaltered. At present an officer cannot be absent for a single day for a year or more previous to taking long leave, without its being deducted from the three months' full-pay leave which is usually taken at the commencement of long leave. Officers usually wish to preserve that period of three months intact, as the difference between full pay and half-pay for that tine assists in meeting the expenses of coming home, and therefore they are compelled to refrain from taking one or two days' leave when they could quite well be spared. If half-pay leave is practically abolished, as now suggested, some arrangement of this kind is an absolute necessity. otherwise an officer would be unable to take any leave at all during four years without curtailing his stay in Europe.
30. The adoption of any such system as 1 have suggested would almost necessarily mvolve an alteration of the present method of remunerating officers who are acting in higher posts. At present an officer so acting can draw no additional pay while the Substantive holder of the post is on vacation leave, but this is not a matter of importance to him in view of the extra remuneration which he receives during the subsequent period of half-pay leave. If, however. halt-pay leave is practically abolished no such extra remuneration will be available, and it seems scarcely reasonable to ask an officer to lischarge for eight months the duties of a superior appointment without receiving any additional emolument beyond the small difference between the duty pay of his own Cluss und that of the Class in which he is acting. I would suggest, therefore, that it' an officer is required to act for more than three months in a class superior to his own, he should be given, after that perio‹l, the minimum pay of the Class in which he is acting. The cost to the Government could scarcely be very great in any case and if supernumerary officers are appointed, as I have suggested above, cases of officers acting in superior Classes will not be quite so numerous as hitherto,
31. in a matter of this kind it is very desirable to ascertain the views of the members of the service and to endeavour to meet them as tar as possible. If, therefore, there is no objection to these proposals from the point of view of the Government, I would -uggest that each member of the service in the Malay Peninsula should be invited to say whether he would prefer them to the present system. Then, if a reasonable majority of the service are in favour of them, they should be adopted in the case of the officers who I do not think that vote for them and should be made compulsory for all newcomers,
there would be any difficulty in allowing the present rules to remain in force for officers who prefer them. The two systems could he worked side by side during the period of transition without any apparent inconvenience.
32. At present, probably the officers who remain longest in the Malay Peninsula without going on leave are the junior members of the service. It is probably true that a man can stand a longer period of continuous residence in the Malay Peninsula at the beginning of his service than later on, but, even so, there can be little doubt that many young officers remain in the East considerably longer than is desirable either in their own interests or in those of the Government. In many cases this is due to inability to face the cost of going home, and I believe that it would be well worth the while of the Government to incur some small expenditure in order to remove this difficulty. I suggest that an officer of the Cadet service who has completed not less than four years' service, and whose pensionable salary is not more than £500 a year, should be given a return passage between Singapore and England by a P. and O. intermediate steaner on the first occasion on which he goes on leave. In consideration of this grant he must be prepared to take his leave at any time that the Government may require after the expiration of tour years' service and, should he decline to do so, he should lose all claim to the provision of a passage.
33. Various suggestions for the alteration of the present pension regulations were put before me. There appears to be a widespread desire that the age of optional retirement should be fixed at 50, or, as an alternative, that an officer should be allowed to take his pension after 21 years' resident service which comes to very much the same thing. I cannot recommend the adoption of either of these suggestions, for which there is nothing
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to be said from the point of view of the Government. The question of reducing the age of optional retirement has repeatedly been raised in the past and repeatedly answered in the negative. If an officer is still physically fit at 50, his services are probably of greater- and are certainly not of less value that they were when he was 40, and to dispense with them would be a useless extravagance, all the more unjustifiable as the expenditure on pensions both in the Straits Settlements and in the Federated Malay States is already very high and is rapidly increasing. In the Colony the pension charges in respect of posts now held by officers of the Cadet service more than doabled between the years 1905 and 1909, while in the Federated Malay States they increased by about 60 per cent, in the same period; and it must be remembered that the service in the Federated Malay States is a comparatively new institution and has expanded rapidly in recent years, so that the number of retirements has not yet approached the normal figure for so large a body of officers. I cannot therefore advise the introduction of any alterations which would add materially to this unproductive expenditure. On one point, however, I think there is ground for making a concession. Under present conditions an officer of the Cadet service who is compelled by ill-health to retire shortly after he has completed the minimum service for pension is in a peculiarly unfortunate position. If he has had ten years' resident service his salary is probably not more than £480 a year, which would entitle him to a pension of £120 a year; at the most it is not likely to exceed £600 a year, the pension in respect of which would be £150 a year. Unlike members of other branches of the Government service, he has no profession to fall back upon, and he must practically make a new start in life at an age when it is extremely difficult to find remunerative employment. Fortunately cases of this kind are not common, but they have occurred in the past and must be expected to occur again, and think that, when they do, the Government might reasonably give the officers concerned somewhat more generous terms than are contemplated in the pension regulations, provided, of course, that their services have been satisfactory. I suggest that the minimum pension in such cases should be at the rate of £200 a year.
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34. If any changes are made in the pension law of the Straits Settlements, the opportunity should be taken to amend the clause as to compulsory retirement. At present, an officer cannot be compelled to retire before he reaches the age of sixty, unless the Governor in Council removes him from office on the ground of inefficiency. Governor is naturally reluctant to make use of the inefficiency clause in the case of an officer who has done good service in the past, but has so far out-lived his utility as no longer to be worth the salary paid to him, and it ought to be made possible to retire such officers without branding them with the stigma of incompetence. Both for this reason and for the sake of uniformity it would be well to bring the law in the Straits Settlements into line with that of the Federated Malay States, under which an officer may be called upon to retire at any time after he attains the age of 55.
35. The last point to which I need refer is a minor matter in regard to which it would be possible for the Government, without cost to itself, to render an appreciable service to many of its officers. At present, some Government houses are furnished, while others are not, and in the latter case it is of course necessary for the officer who is inhabiting the house to provide his own furniture. When an officer in this position goes on leave He cannot store to Europe he is faced with the problem of disposing of his furniture.
it, as no facilities for storage exist, and unless his locum tenens will take it over-and probably in most cases the latter is unwilling to do so, as he has his own turniture --he inust sell it for what it will fetch, probably less than half what it cost, and purchase new furniture when he returns. A similar situation arises when an officer is transferred from a post where he has unfurnished quarters to one where furniture is provided, and, as transfers are necessarily frequent, an officer is lucky if he is not compelled to dispose of This state his furniture and purchase new several times in the course of his career. of affairs involves a good deal of expense and trouble to the service and benefits nobody, except, of course, the furniture dealers, but it can easily be remedied. I suggest that in future all Government houses should be partly furnished, i.e., the Government should in every case provide the necessary articles of heavy furniture, such as dinner-tables, almeirahs, bath-jars, &c., the cost being reckoned as part of the cost of the houses, on which the rent is based, or, if it is thought better, a separate rent being charged for the furniture. The initial cost, which would not be large, especially as much of the furniture could be made in the prisons, would be recovered in the shape of rent, so that no actual expense to the Government would be involved, and I believe that such an arrangement would be very acceptable to most members of the service. Probably a few officers would, for various reasons, prefer not to be provided with Government furniture, but it is clear that the system would be unworkable if exceptions were made. If, therefore, the practice of