CO129-569-7 Revision of salaries 6-7-1938 - 11-10-1938 — Page 16

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A

the recommendation by the Anomalies Committee that the

fixed allowance of £150 should be made to engineers

acting as Executive Engineers.

It seems clear that the new scheme, while

not continuing to the P..D. the exceptionally favoured

position given to it in the 1929 salaries revision,

has nevertheless related remuneration of engineers to in Hong Kong for professional departments the general level of salaries now adopted/ and that any

disturbance of this new relationship would be resented

by those other officers. I would, therefore, advise

that the Governor's views should be accepted and that

he should be requested in reply to No. 4 to inform the

petitioners that the Secretary of State has received

and considered their representations but that he cannot

see cause to vary in their favour the scheme of

remuneration in the Government Service, which has been

adopted after full consideration not only of local

conditions but the comparable levels of remuneration

elsewhere in the Colonial Service.

In No. 5 the Governor transmits a petition

from the European masters in the Education Department.

These officers profess to accept the general African

standards which were the basis of the recent scheme of

revision in Hong Kong, but they claim that the new

scales which have been allotted to them are inferior to

that standard. These representations, along with those of the Engineers, were considered by the Anomalies

Committee before they finally drafted their report and

by the Governor before he accepted that report. The

Governor cannot agree that the main theme of the

petitioners' protest is justified and, for instance,

in comparison with terms of service in West Africa

he