CO129-599-2 Salaries Commission- 1947 Report 1-1-1947 - 31-12-1949 — Page 45

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executive officer. The nature and responsibilities of these senior posts will naturally vary with the develop- ment of social services within the Colony and we would not suggest that the list of scheduled posts we have put forward is exhaustive. We tentatively recommend that the holders of the posts of Chief Clerk, Colonial Secretariat, General Secretary of the Public Works Department, Treasury Accountant and Treasury Inspector should be graded as senior executive officers grade I and the Treasury Cashier, the Accountants in the Railway, Public Works Department and the Waterworks, and the Secretaries in the Medical Department and the Urban Council might be graded as senior executive officers, grade II.

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Women clerks have been engaged since the reoccupation and their work has proved satisfactory. We have therefore provided salary scales for women clerical officers at 80% of the scales for male clerical officers. Grade III runs from $1440 per annum to $2040 per annum, grade II from $2160 to $3360 and grade I from $3600 to $4800. We recommend that entry should be by competitive examination for which the possession of the Hong Kong School Leaving Certificate should be the minimum qualification. We have made separate provision for stenographers, who should possess a Hong Kong School Leaving Certificate or its equivalent and be able to pass a prescribed typing and shorthand test before appointment as stenographers grade II on the scale 82880 to $4800. Promotion to stenographer grade I should depend upon vacancies in this grade and ability to pass a more advanced shorthand and typing test. In addition we recommend the creation of a small grade of senior stenographers and secretaries for promotion to which the same technical qualifications will be required together with secretarial ability of a high order.

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We have considered representations from various Heads of Departments that the nature of the work in their particular departments was so specialised that there was a loss of efficiency in drawing their clerical staff from a general clerical service and through losing inen through transfer to other departments Complaints were also received regarding the slowness of promotion for clerical officers and the apparent unfairness of the system of making promotions. Certain Heads of Departments have suggested that their departments should be made closed departments and that their clerks should receive promotion within their own departments. Although we appreciate the difficulties which such Heads of Departments may have experienced and can readily understand their reluctance to part with officers who have, through experience and specialisation, made their scrvices particularly valuable in a certain direction, we consider that it would be neither in the interests of the officers themselves nor of the public service as a whole to extend the system of closed departments. Instead we recommend that all clerical staff not excluding the present postal clerks should be in c single unified service. We are of the opinion that by the creation of the executive grade we have opened up an avenue of promotion to the outstanding officer at any stage of his career in the Clerical Service and that adequate provision should be made by the setting up of the proposed Public Services Commission to which reference is made in Chapter IX to ensure that promotions are made fairly and according to merit.

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