CO129-590-27 Ex-employees of Hong Kong Government- relief payments and allowances 27-3-1942 - 16-8-1943 — Page 94

Extract from letter dated 11th October, 1942 from Mr. Sedgwick

•

93

ノ

"Payments to the Next of Kin of Civil Servants Dying After the Fall of Hongkong: Mr. K. L. Chau who was formerly in the Education Department and was chief Chinese censor, is now working for me. He has brought a document from a Miss Hung Mui Chi, a senior Vernacular Mistress, who joined the Education Department in 1905, and was drawing a salary of $3,000 a year. She was seconded to the censorship during the war. After the fall of Hongkong, she was taken ill and died in Hongkong on 29th August, 1942. On 28th August, she signed a Government form which I enclose, authorising Mr. K. J. Chau to receive any salary due to her. Her dying wish was that Mr. Chau should receive any money she was due and hand it over to her two sisters. These two sisters were working in the censorship, but are still in Hongkong where they have a house of their own. They would have little prospect of employment in Free China and are unwilling to leave merely to collect some two thousand dollars each which would be due to them for their own services. Mr. Chau wishes to know whether Miss Hung Mui Chi's back pay up to

He will the date of her death can be handed over to him. then write to the two sisters and ask them to come out. Mr. Chau is a senior Government servant drawing a salary

I have of £950 a year, and is personally known to me. no doubt at all about the correctness of the fact of the case. I should however like London's views on problems of this nature. Is the money we pay out to Government servants on behalf of the. Hongkong Government relief to assist them when they come to China or is it something to which they have legal claim and which can be passed on to their next of kin in the event of their death? There have been several other cases of this nature where Government servants have died before they can report, either in Hongkong or Chine. Are their next of kin entitled to receive what the men himself would have bee given? In most cases the Government servant is pensionable and has contributed to the W. & 0. fund and his widow has at any rate some claim for a pension. Unmarried female officers do not of course have to pay W. & C.contribution, and their pensions die with them. normal practice of the Hongkong Government was to give pension or gratuities only to the widow or sons up to : age of 18, or unmarried daughters up to the age shall be grateful for a Colonial Office ruling.

21.

}

본