(1).
41
Similarly,
total of £1,591,716. Items indirectly connected with the war are Civil Servants' salaries and allotments £1,644,74 3, pensions and gratuities £763,624 and the purchase of stores in connection with the re-occupation £120,892. The first of these items chiefly relatos to the payment of arrears of salary to officials in respect of their period of internment. most of the payments in respect of pensions and gratuities must have been made when no Hong Kong Government was in being, and a proportion of these pension payments are, of course, directly due to deaths and illhoalth resulting from hardships undergone during internment. The view which I am sure will be taken locally is that His Majesty's Government should not sook to recover sums advanced to meet such liabilities. It will be argued that if, as a rosult of boing overrun by the enemy, a Colonial Government has coased to exist and has been cut off from its normal sources of revenuc, it is for the mother country to meet any liabilities which may arise, until the Colony can be restored to its former status as a member of the British Commonwealth. In this connection, it must be remembered that Hong Kong utilised its only remaining assot, the incomo from the Exchange Fund, to a total of £1,302,059 to meet those payments as far as she could, and only after this was exhausted did it become necessary for the Imperial Government to stop in and moot the balance.
5.
It will be recollected that in his telegram No. 589 of the 1st April, 1947, Sir Mark Young reported that, in response to representations from Unofficial Members of Legislative Council, he had given an undertaking that no war charges at present in suspenso would be charged to cxpenditur: until an opportunity had been given for Legislative Council t debate the matter. When he gave this undertaking, my predecessor had in mind such items as voluntoor pay and ponsi no, ropatriation passages for non-officials, relief and maintenance payments and payments to Civil Defence workers. In reply to more recent question, it was cxplained that some of those payments had already been charged to expenditure by the Hong Kong London Accounts Office before the ro-cstablishment of Civil Government while others were in suspense. The total already charged to expenditure is given in the first sentence of paragraph 4 of this despatch and amounts to £1,591,716. In addition, the following amounts are still in susponse:-
Voluntoor pay and pensions
Repatriation passages of
non-officials
£244,500
59,400
Relief and maintenance payments
449,000
Payments to Civil Defenco
workers
254,500
£1,007,400 $1618»!
The above figures are only approximate and further charges will no doubt be contained in the more recent Crown Agents' ¡accounts. In particular, there is a further sum outstanding
in respectví relief payments in Macao, amounting to some £467,120, which 111,509 relates to pensions and salaries of Hong Kong officiels. But if it is agreed that the Colony could only be expected to moet commitments during the occupation to the extent that this was possible by utilising its only asset, the income from the Exchange Fund, the fact that a small part of this further relief claim is made up of salaries and pensions is irrelevant.
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