CO129-599-2 Salaries Commission- 1947 Report 1-1-1947 - 31-12-1949 — Page 64

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158.

We are of opinion that the sick leave rules should contain special provision for officers suffering from tuberculosis, a disease of wide incidence in Hong Kong. Government servants are at present accommodated for long periods of curative treatment in the Queen Mary Hospital, a general hospital, with the result that its accommodation and resources are strained. We should welcome an ample provision of sanatorium accommodation for Government servants and for the public generally. Mean- time we consider that a man should be assured that his sick leave will be terminated only if it is found necessary to invalid him out of the service.

Local Leave.

159.

Evidence showed how relatively little men have been accustomed to take advantage of short annual leave. Hong Kong is not well placed. To escape from summer heat and humidity an officer has had to travel to Japan, to distant places in China, to the Philippines or to Indo- China, at great expense and frequently with a good deal of discomfort. At present few of these places are accessible. Short leave spent in Hong Kong is hardly more than extended absence from office duty; which in itself is not commonly of much profit to mind or body. There are administrative difficulties against releasing more than a fraction of the officers who may wish to take leave at the time of the year at which the leave most profitably can be taken. Further we had evidence that there is a tendency to regard the man who uses his annual leave for the purpose for which it was given as selfish because he leaves some other person to do his work, a

It is in point of view equally irrational and vicious.

the public interest that officers should take local leave the provision is ample: our only recommendation is that, as conditions in the area improve, officers should be encouraged to take the local leave due to them.

Passages.

160.

We do not recommend any fundamental changes in the rules governing the provision of passages. Some amendment to General Order 197(2) will be required as the result of the revision of salaries. We propose that expatriate stenographers on the permanent establish- ment should be granted leave and passages on the same terms as other expatriate officers. We consider that the privilege of free fares to certain destinations at present enjoyed by Police and Prisons officers when proceeding on or returning from leave in the United Kingdom and Ireland should be abolished, if the officers concerned elect to come on the new sal ary scales and terms of service.

161.

In view

We recommend that expatriate officers should be allowed to opt in ordinary circumstances whether to travel by sea or air when proceeding on or returning from home leave, but that air travel should not be compulsory unless in any particular case it is necessitated by the exigencies of the service. of the extra cost to Government of air travel we recommend that officers on leave travelling by air should not be allowed the normal standard voyage allowance but

The only the actual number of days spent on the flight, possibilities of delay owing to bad flying weather and the differences in the time schedules of the various air lines would seem to preclude the prescription of a