CO129-558-3 Levy on Salaries- petition from Chinese Civil Servants 3-1-1936 - 19-12-1936 — Page 216

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6.

The Colonial Secretary said as follows:

a very fair scheme and indeed a tardy act of justice".

"Granted that the scheme is fair, the payment of the se

salaries becomes a debt of honour which the Colony is bound

to meet unless in so doing it should place a crushing burden

on the taxpayers. But, Sir, what are the facts? It cannot

be denied that the Colony is lightly taxed.' 11

:}

"No one can guarantee the future course of the dollar and

even since our calculations were made the dollar has dropped

still further. Should it remain below 1/6 there will necess-

arily be an increase in the cost of the scheme as calculated

in dollars but the increase will be fully justified"...." "If

I understand the Commissioners correctly they did intend that

an officer should receive the full dollar equivalent of his

substantive salary, however low the dollar may fall."

Your Petitioners feel that the fact that the Salaries Commiss-

ion consisted of the Hon. Sir Shouson Chow, then senior Chinese

Member of Council, and Mr. Paul Lauder, then Manager of the Union

Insurance Society of Canton Limited, under the Chairmanship of

His Honour Sir Henry Cowper Gollan, K.C., then Chief Justice of

the Colony, together with the foregoing extracts from the speeches

of the Governor and the Colonial Secretary, will provide more

satisfactory proof of the reasonableness of their salaries than

any contentions which they might themselves urge.

Your Petitioners venture to recall that the recommendation

of the Salaries Commission that they should receive a high cost

of living bonus of 15% for married and 7% for single officers

so that they should suffer no diminution of their salaries in

dollars has never been implemented on the grounds that the fall

in the value of the dollar below two shillings provided them

without such bonus with as many or more dollars than they received

prior to the Commission's Report. Yet when the dollar rose to

two shillings in April 1935, and remained above or in the neigh-

bourhood of that figure until October 1935, the Government,