CO885-11 — Page 495

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

חווי

Reference :-

C.O.882/11

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

མ་ ་ ཡ

C. 88342/31 [No. 2].

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No. 11.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE to THE GOVERNOR.

(Sent 7.30 p.m., 11th December, 1931.).

TELEGRAM.

No. 238. Your despatch of 24th August, Confidential (2).* I regret that reply has been delayed owing to consideration of question whether appointments of two cadets from August examination could be cancelled. On this point see my telegram No. 227.† I accept other proposals in your despatch under reply and you may announce that until further notice recruitment of cadets will be confined to Ceylonese. I agree to communication of despatch and reply to Board of Ministers.--CUNLIFFE-LISTER

C. 83368/31 [No. 1].

No. 12.

THE GOVERNOR to THE SECRETARY OF STATE. (Received 21st December, 1981.) Queen's House,

(Confidential.)

SIR,

Colombo, 2nd December, 1931. I HAVE the honour to inform you that I have received a communication from the Chairman of the Ceylon Civil Service Association in which he states that at a special meeting of the Association held recently to consider the effect of recent developments upon the position of public servants, it was decided to ask me to request you to be good enough to receive a deputation from the Association, the deputation to consist of three or four members of the Service who will be on leave in England at the end of the year, and to be led by Mr. B. G. de Glanville, Chairman of the Association.

2. I enclose at the request of the Association a memorandum outlining the repre- sentations which the deputation proposes to place before you. I am not prepared to comment on this memorandum at present, but I shall address a despatch to you towards the end of January next dealing generally with the position of the Public Services in Ceylon, and with the question of the existing and future safeguards-a question which, as stated in my Confidential telegram No. 247, dated 24th November, 1931, is one of great difficulty.

3. I shall be glad if you can find it convenient to afford the proposed deputation an opportunity of placing before you its representations.

I have, &c..

GRAEME THOMSON,

Governor

Enclosure in No. 12.

MEMORANDUM.

DURING the period when the present Constitution was being drafted, the Civil Service Association put forward two main contentions: first, that the proposed safe- guards for the salaries and conditions of service of public servants were unsatisfactory, and secondly, that adequate terms of retirement must be provided which would allow officers who found themselves unable to serve under the altered conditions to retire.

2. On the question of the safeguards, we stated as early as October, 1929, that it was probable that the Council would endeavour to whittle down the salaries, allowances, and other privileges of public servants by gradual reductions and altera- tions which, individually, could not well be treated as matters of paramount importance, but which in their cumulative effect might very seriously impair the position of the Services, and we added that such procedure would produce constant friction between We also the Governor and the Council, and would undoubtedly have the effect of making the terms and conditions of Public Service a matter of political controversy.

† C. 83342/31 [No. 3]: not printed.

* No. 9.

+ C. 83342/31 [No. 4]: not printed,

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urged that it was most undesirable that the Governor should be subjected to the possible necessity of precipitating a political crisis in order to safeguard the position of the Services. In reply to these and subsequent representations in the same tenor, we were informed that the Secretary of State considered that our interests had been safeguarded in a fair and reasonable way.

3. In the matter of the terms of retirement, we showed that the terms proposed were much less favourable than those granted under similar conditions elsewhere, and were, in fact, so inadequate as to constitute a denial of the right to retire to the majority of European public servants. In reply to these representations, we were informed that the Secretary of State was satisfied that the terms of compensation set out in the approved regulations, coupled with the grant of the continuing option to retire on those terms, and with the comparative security which, under the new Constitution, was given to the salaries and conditions of service of public servants, afforded a reasonable and satisfactory solution of the whole question.

4. Experience has now shown beyond question that whilst the political campaign against the salaries, allowances, and conditions of service of public servants has become intensified under the new Constitution, the safeguards provided in the Order in Council will not stand against political pressure and have failed to afford to public servants the protection which Government intended them to afford. That, in spite of the fact that a general cut in salaries must be unfair in its incidence and must bear much more hardly upon Europeans, the Governor and the Secretary of State should have felt compelled to agree to such a cut before there was any financial necessity for it, is a most striking indication of the control which under the new Constitution the Ministers and the State Council really exercise over the Public Services, and of the ineffectiveness of the safeguards.

5. The position of the Public Services in Ceylon was described by the Donough- more Commission on pages 125 to 127 of their Report. It is now abundantly clear that the hopes which Government entertained that the new Constitution would bring about an improvement in the general conditions of the Services have not materialized. The results, so far at least as European officers are concerned, have been most markedly in the reverse direction.

6. The whole question, therefore, calls for revision, and the intolerable position in which the higher Public Services are now placed makes it imperative that immediate action should be taken to provide some remedy. To delay or postpone such action in the present state of feeling in the Services would be to court a breakdown of the Administration.

7. After most careful consideration, we are agreed that the measure best suited to meet the position is that a substantial addition should be made to the compensation awarded to European officers for loss of career, sufficient to make it reasonably possible for such officers, at least in the latter part of their service, to retire should they wish to do so.

Apart from any question of injustice to officers who are unwilling to remain, the compulsory retention of a large body of European officers in the Service is one of the root causes of the ill-feeling against the official which is increasing in so marked a degree.

Whilst the Government Services in Ceylon will continue to offer to Ceylonese one of the best careers open to them in their own country, it is now clearly useless to hope that the conditions for European officers will be such as the majority of them can be called upon to accept or can be expected to be willing to accept. Unless, therefore, Government is to break faith entirely with the European officers whom it has appointed to the Services in this Colony, it must provide terms which will give them a real option of retiring, that is to say, it must give them such compensation as will make it reasonably possible for the older men to retire, and will be sufficient in the case of the younger men to tide them over a reasonable period during which they can seek other employment. If this is done, the appreciable, if gradual, reduction in the numbers of European officials which should result will go far to allay the present hostility and reduce the attacks upon the Public Services. The form which we recom- mend that the further compensation should take is a gratuity in addition to the pensions provided for under the present regulations based, as was the case in Egypt, upon the salary actually drawn by the officer at the time of retirement. This additional com- pensation should, in our opinion, be graded down uniformly from a maximum at the age of 45 to nothing at the age of 55.

8. We would again stress the importance of the considerations put forward by us in paragraph 14 of our memorial of the 7th of February, 1931. We consider that in the general interests there should now be no further recruitment of Europeans under the present terms.

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