CO129-468 - Governor Sir Stubbs - 1921 [6-8] — Page 33

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8. We submit that in order to provide a career sufficiently at-

tractive to obtain and to keep the right type of officer the

grades should be widened and the incremental system substituted

for the graded system until an officer reaches a salary sufficient

to maintain and educate a family. In this connection we would

acquaint Your Lordship of the fact that during the past 25 years many Civil Engineers in the Public Works Department of Hongkong have been offered and have accepted positions much more

remunerative outside the service, We also humbly beg to draw

Your Lordship's attention to the difficulty at present being experienced in obtaining suitable candidates for positions as

Civil Engineers in this Department.

In this section of the Public Works Department we humbly

submit there are too many grades each with too narrow a scope

and as promotion from one grade to another depends on the occurrence of a vacancy, there are too many points in an officer's

career at which his promotion may be automatically blocked.

As an officer's years of service increase so do his responsibilities; his children must be sent to Tngland to be educated and he is obliged for part of the time to maintain two

separate stablishments.

9. Beyond the upper limit fixed for the incremental system there are the higher appointments, few in number with correspond- ingly higher Salaries and to which in the ordinary course of events only a limited number of officers can attain.

ever

10. We, your humble petitioners, beg to submit for Your Lordship's consideration the following scale of revised Salaries which, after mature deliberation, we are strongly of opinion is the minimum necessary to enable us to live in that degree of comfort and dignity which we know we are entitled to enjoy.

(4).