CO129-541-2 Estimates 1931 14-10-1932 - 19-7-1934 — Page 340

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Senior Clerical & Accounting Staff are also new posts.

The former will inspect all tenements for which

406

applications for refund of rates are made on the ground that

the premises are vacant. The clerical officer is

required to assist in the office side of the work.

It

This state of affairs

is very necessary that both the Assistant Assessors

should spend a considerable part of their time out of doors

inspecting. But the absence from the office of both of

them at the same time is apt to inconvenience members of

the public who come to see them.

will be largely remedied by the presence of the Senior

Clerical officer. The object in view is to leave the

Assistant Assessors as free as possible to make visits

in any part of the Colony; and the justification is

found in a recent intensive enquiry into a comparatively

small area in Kowloon where the Assessment was found to be

too low by some three lakhs of dollars representing a

shortage of some $50,000 Government Revenue. The

provision of a motor car to assist the Assistant

Assessors is an obviously reasonable measure.

G

I would invite the attention of Hon. Members to

the nine Assistant Marine Surveyors and to footnote (6)

on page 31. In accordance with the undertaking given

in its Commentary on the Retrenchment Commission that,

on the post of Government Marine Surveyor falling vacant,

there would be no corresponding recruitment in the

staff of Assistant Surveyors, provision for one

Assistant

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