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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
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influenced also by the circumstance that of all the departments this was the only one in which an improvement in the rates of pay could not be represented as an increase of expenditure on non-Ceylonese officers. The material which the Committee has collected will be of great value in the future, but the actual report does not seem to me capable of acceptance as a convincing or a conclusive document.
5. In order to indicate my reasons for this opinion it is necessary for me to do little more than invite Your Lordship's attention to the first two paragraphs of the rider appended to the report by the Chairman, Sir Wilfrid Woods. It is evident that Sir Wilfrid Woods did not regard the report as satisfactory, and that, even with the reservations contained in his rider, he only signed because he did not wish delibera- tions and discussions which had continued for three years to become entirely abortive, and because he agreed with the majority of the recommendations so far as they went. Excluding the Chairman, no less than seven out of the eleven members of the Com- mittee appended riders to the report. This indicates that the members themselves were not altogether satisfied with the result of their labours, although the cause of It is significant that their dissatisfaction might probably not coincide with mine. Sir Wilfrid Woods, while admitting that there are grounds for believing the remunera. tion offered to some officers occupying posts of exceptional difficulty and responsibility to be not commensurate with their importance, did not see fit to make any recommenda- He has given two reasons for his tions to the Salaries Committee in this behalf.
a conviction omission to do so, but he must, I think, have been deterred also by that no recommendation for an increase in the emoluments of these officers would have stood the remotest chance of acceptance by the Committee.
G. I will refer to four points only in the report as indicative of the Committee's general attitude. These are:-
(i) The proposal in paragraph 19 of the report in regard to the modification
of the present scheme of leave passages.
(ii) The proposal in paragraph 52 to introduce two halts in the Civil Service
time scale.
Both of these proposals I regards as unacceptable.
(iii) The rejection by the Committee of the proposals of the Inspector-General
of Police referred to in paragraph 162 of the report.
(iv) The refusal to accept the proposals put forward by Sir Wilfrid Woods for improvement of the prospects of certain posts in the Engineering, Scientific and Technical Services.
I consider that some improvement in the position of Superintendents of Police, Grade I, is necessary, and I agree with Sir Wilfrid Woods that his proposals in regard to certain of the Engineering, Scientific and Technical Services were moderate and reasonable, and should have been accepted.
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7. Sir Wilfrid Woods has stated in his rider that, after mature consideration, he concluded that no alteration was necessary in the present scale of salaries of the Ceylon Civil Service. I am not prepared to express either agreement or disagree- ment with this opinion. Valuable as it is. I do not think that without reference to some further investigation I ought to accept it as final. In my judgment, the question deserves closer examination, both on its merits and more especially for the removal of any sense of neglect or injustice from the minds of Civil Servants. no useful purpose could have been served by pressing it on the attention of the members of the Salaries Committee is sufficiently shown by their recommendations in regard to the passage allowance and the introduction of halts in the Civil Service time scale. I have not of course overlooked that the Civil Service Association, in its letter of 10th January, 1927, which is quoted in paragraph 51 of the report, decided to accept
"the present scheme as affording a stable settlement of our conditions of service." I do not think that such a statement ought to have been made if it was intended to be applicable to conditions and circumstances which were not, and could not be, foreseen at the time when it was made, or that, having heen made, it should be permitted to stand in the way of such further consideration of any salaries scheme as new conditions and circumstances might appear to warrant.
8. In the third paragraph of this despatch I referred to the disquieting effect upon the Services of a recent debate in the Legislative Council. The third paragraph of the introductory chapter of the Salaries Committee's report on Civil List salaries, and the rider signed by Messrs. Obeyesekere, Kannangara. Fernando, and Mahadeva, deal with the vexed question of placing the salaries of public servants on a Ceylonese basis, with overseas allowances in the case of officers recruited abroad, and indicate that the refusal to refer this question to the Committee had, in the opinion of some
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at any rate of its members, been a mistake. In this connexion I would invite atten- tion to the following passage in paragraph 58 of my despatch of the 2nd June, 1929 :— "Personally I am in entire accord with the Commissioners' advocacy of the so-called overseas allowance. I think it eminently reasonable, as well as desirable in the interests of economy, that the salaries of future entrants into the service should be fixed on a basic scale suitable to the needs of officers domiciled in Ceylon or in India, and that the unavoidably greater needs of officers domiciled elsewhere should be met by the grant to them of a supplementary pensionable allowance. But it would be most unfortunate if a principle so eminently fair and equitable in itself were to be misinterpreted here as an expres- sion of racial bias or a form of racial discrimination, and I would urge therefore that it should not be introduced until local opinior. is ready to accept it as fair and equitable A change of this nature should not be imposed from without, lest the harm done by the exacerbation of racial susceptibilities should outweigh in importance the benefit to economical administration which might be expected to flow from it. I helieve that, before very long, public opinion here will be able
to approach this question without the prejudice in which at present it would be enveloped. However that may be, I cannot advise you to refer the question of a basic Ceylonese scale and an overseas allowance to a Commission from Great Britain at this juncture, and this attitude has the support of my Executive Council."
The Colonial Secretary, himself a strong advocate of the overseas allowance system, who, as a recent arrival, was naturally less affected than we and others of my advisers by the atmosphere of prejudice which had previously enveloped the ques- tion, expressed to me his opinion that the time was now ripe for a more or less dis- passionate discussion of it, and suggested thai the views of the Unofficial Members of the Legislative Council might be obtained. I accordingly instructed him to give an opportunity for a debate on a motion standing in the name of Mr. C. W. W. Kannangara :—
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That the salaries of public servants be fixed on a rupee basis and to meet local requirements with the addition of an overseas allowance in the case of non- Ceylonese officers recruited from abroad." The intimation that the Colonial Secretary would move the suspension of the Standing Orders so as to allow this motion to be taken out of its proper turn was received by the Council with approval, and the motion was debated on 13th March, 1930. I attach the uncorrected" Hansard " proof report* of the proceedings. The Colonial Secre- tary announced that the Government agreed with the motion, but that, in order to obtain a free expression of unofficial opinion, the official vote would be withheld. It was evident from the outset that several of the members who voted against a similar motion in October, 1926, had changed their minds, and that the principle of the motion met with the approval of a considerable majority. The circumstance that Government was ready to lend support to an unofficial motion had, however, aroused suspicions. Unofficial members began to speculate as to what dark designs the Government might he harbouring. Apparently they concluded that the Government intended, if the motion were carried, to take the opportunity of increasing European rather than decreasing Ceylonese emoluments, and immediately after the tea interval Mr. Maha- deva moved that the motion be amended by the insertion of the word non-pension- able "before" overseas allowance" and by the addition, at the end of the motion, of the words provided that the salary and overseas allowance shall in no case exceed the emoluments proposed in the Civil List Salaries Report." As the acceptance of this amendment would have entailed an acceptance of the objectionable features of the report of the Salaries Committee to which I have alluded in paragraph 6 above, and a reduction in the pensions of future European entrants to the service, the Colonial Secretary at once announced that the Government could not accept it, and that the official vote would be cast against it. After further debate the amendment was, carried by 20 votes to 14, one member abstaining. Three unofficial members (one Burgher and two Europeans, the former being opposed to the original motion) voted with the Government. The motion as amended was then put to the vote, and carried, a division not being challenged by the Government.
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9. While I am not sure that the implications of the amendment were fully under- stood by all who voted in favour of it, this debate confirms my conviction, suggested by the general attitude of unofficial members referred to in my telegram of 1st October
* Not reprinted.