CO129-599-5 Salaries Commission- Appendices to Report 1-1-1947 - 31-12-1949 — Page 5

copy.

Secretariat File No: 4174/46C.

No: 215

CONFIDENTIAL

Sir,

GOVERNMENT HOUSE,

HONG KONG.

12thSeptember, 1947.

With reference to previous correspondence resting with your despatch

No. 250 of 7th August, 1947, I have the honour to forward for your consideration Encl.

1. two copies of the report of the Hong Kong Salaries Commission, 1947.

2.

The Commission, as will be perceived from a study of the Report,

recommends that the principles enumerated in the White Paper Colonial No. 197 should

in general be accepted and applied to the public service in Hong Kong. It proposes

scales of salaries which have been determined according to the nature of the work

involved, and at rates which are applicable to locally recruited officers and which

take into account, so far as is practicable in present circumstances, the ruling

income levels in those classes of the community from which the public service is, or

may be, expected to be recruited. It has recommended expatriation pay for overseas

officers at rates which, it considers, should be sufficient to attract and retain

such officers. It proposes the abolition of the present practice of providing free

quarters for certain classes of officers, and of granting other officers rent

allowances and has incorporated into the revised salary scales an element for rent.

It proposes that an economic rent should be charged if Government quarters are

provided. The Commission has recognised that a substantial improvement has taken

place, since the reoccupation, in the standard of living, of the lower grades of the

public sc.vice and of manual labourers generally, and it proposes that this improvc-

ment should be maintained in the Government Service by a proportionately greater

increase in basic salaries than for the middle and upper grades. It recommends, in

order to allow for the permanent decrease in the purchasing power of money, that

there should be an increase of 200% on lower grade salaries, falling to 30% on

salaries of about $1,000 per month and 20% on salaries of about $1500 per month, with

a flat rate increase above that figure. In addition, it has added one sixth to exis-

ting salary scales in order to assimilate house allowance privileges, but on the

higher alaries the increase is proportionately smaller.

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

A. CREECH JONES, M. P.