CO129-572-8 Leave and passage regulations 4-2-1938 - 30-12-1938 — Page 19

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The use

There is of course

4. We are incidentally confirmed in this belief by the use

of two expressions in the Crown Agents' letter and the recent

financial resolution. The letter and the resolution both speak

of pensions "granted" on or after the 1st June 1938.

of this term obscures the real nature of the pensions, which

find their analogy in life assurance annuities rather than in

officers' pensions. It is true that the term "granted" is used

in the definition of the term "pension" in the 1900 and 1908

Ordinances, but this seems to be a mere accident of expression,

because what the Ordinances contemplate throughout is the "pay-

ment" of widows' and orphans' pensions already "registered",

to which the recipients are "entitled".

machinery for testing whether a claimant is "entitled", but

except in three special and obvious cases (see sections 15,

21, and 26), there is no machinery, such as exists in the case

of officers' pensions, for the use of any discretion. Widows'

and orphans' pensions under the Ordinances are to be paid by

the Government, not as an exercise of discretion, but as a

matter of obligation, for value received from the whole body

of contributors. We also notice that the letter speaks of

pensions "calculated on dollar salaries", and that the reso-

lution refers to "pensions calculated on dollar salaries".

Widows' and orphans' pensions, however, are not calculated on

salaries at all. They are, of course, partly dependent on

the rates of salary drawn, but they are calculated, according

to fixed actuarial tables, on the total amount of the officer's

contributions, actually collected and notionally accumulated.

This is most important and is indeed a fundamental principle.

It will be seen that the recent financial resolution violates

it.

5. The widows and orphans' pension scheme was originally

a fund. While it was still a fund, the Government, by the

financial resolution of the 7th August 1902, promised to pay

widows' pensions at 3/- and to make good out of revenue any

difference between that rate and the rate of the day at the time

of the payment of the pensions. That promise stood for 36 years,

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