HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
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HON. MR. S. W. TS'O.-As Senior Chinese member I desire to associate myself with the views expressed by Sir Henry Pollock.
HON. MR. M. K. LO.-Your Excellency, I beg leave to make a few observations on the Bill which is now before this Council.
I would like to commence by recording my personal sense of satisfaction that Government has decided to seek legislative sanction. for its proposals embodied in the Bill, as this procedure affords a convenient opportunity of expressing our views on a matter which involves important questions of principle.
It is not, I know, sought to justify the levy on the ground that the salaries of the whole staff are too high to the extent of the percentages by which it is sought to have them reduced; if this were so, the general reduction should not be a merely temporary arrangement: it should be made permanent. According to the statement of the Hon. the Attorney General in introducing the Bill before this Council, the levy is being invoked in order to reduce the expenditure side of the Budget, and so to balance the Budget for 1936.
In times of violent fluctuations in the cost of living caused by the vagaries of Exchange or other factors, periodic adjustments of salaries in relation to such disturbing factors may be reasonable and necessary. For instance, I believe I am right in saying that in England the basic pre-war salary rates are adjusted every six months if the price index moves as much as five points up or down.
But I consider that it would be a dangerous disturbance of the fundamental principle of security on which the Civil Service is based to subject Civil servants' salaries to variations depending on the income and expenditure of the Colonial Exchequer, unaccompanied by circumstances affecting the financial stability of the Colony. I have no doubt that, confronted with such circumstances, and taken into the confidence of the Government, the Civil servants would readily and voluntarily respond to any reasonable appeal to make sacrifices in the interests of the Colony.
Civil servants cannot, in my view, be regarded in the same light as employees of a commercial firm. The Civil Service is not a concern making a profit measurable in money, or dependent upon the satisfaction of consumers in a competitive market. It is not doing work which can be measured exactly in terms of any similar work outside. It can offer none of the "glittering prizes" which at least were formerly obtainable in the industrial or commercial world. Its chief attraction lies in its being a "sheltered service", with a guaranteed income, an assured permanence in employment unaffected by the varying ups-and-downs of commercial prosperity and depression. Its history, its prestige, and, indeed, its very existence, rest on the sure foundation of security. This foundation should not therefore be lightly shaken.
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