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the sterling salary scheme survived until 1919
when the Salaries Commission reviewed at length
the past and present systems and circumstances,
and came to the conclusion that all salaries
should in future be expressed in local currency.
They said that with a fixed dollar any conceivable
utility, which a sterling scheme might have,
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appeared to them to vanish altogether, and they
drew attention to the fact that since the dollar
(fixed at 2/4d. sterling) was just as much the
standard unit of currency in Malaya as the
rupee in India or the shilling in England, the
expression of salaries in sterling had the
particular danger that it showed on paper a
plausible, but intrinsically valueless comparison
between what purports to be the "gold" pay in
this and other countries.
"A salary expressed
as £350 per annum may be read by eyes in England
as something almost worth attention: transmuted
into $250 a month in Singapore it is what one
would pay at en pension terms for a front bed-
sitting room at one of the better class hotels".
In Hong Kong the sterling salaries
scheme has continued to this day. Salaries were
reviewed in 1913 on complaints from the Public
Service in that Colony that salaries were
insufficient. The Governor explained that this
disatisfaction was largely due to the high rate
of exchange which had supervened upon an
undoubted increase in the cost of living. In
1902, when the sterling salaries scheme had been
introduced and exchange compensation granted,
the average exchange rate of the dollar was 1/81⁄2d.
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