CO129-611-5 Development Secretariat- appointment of registrar of Co-operatives 10-3-1947 - 10-3-1948 — Page 60

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the funds will be provided.

At the same time I think I should comment

briefly in this letter on the statement in the

second paragraph of your letter of the 16th June

to the effect that the Development Secretariat

in Hong Kong, owing to the nature of its activity,

would be a patently suitable charge on C. D. & W.

funds. I cannot agree that this is by any means

the case. The Development Secretariat in Hong Kong is not on all fours with Development Secretariats

in other colonies, in the sense that it is concerned

exclusively with development. You will see from the 1947/48 Estimates that it comprises a Directorate, and Agricultural Department, a Fisheries

Department, a Forestry Department and a Gardens

Department (we are now as you know proposing to add a Co-operation Department). Before the war all

these small existing Departments, many of them

virtually one-man Departments, were responsible

direct to the Colonial Secretariat, but the more

convenient and efficient arrangement has now been

adopted of bringing them all, under the direction

and supervision of one officer, the Secretary for

Development. Clearly however, notwithstanding this

re-organisation and the new nomenclature for the

Department, each of its component sub-Departments

is carrying on with its normal routine administrative

work: there are no other Departments outside the

Development Secretariat concerned with the routine administrative work of Forestry, Agriculture, Fisheries,

Gardens etc. as you find in a territory organised

such

on

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