CO129-612-2 Police Department- petition from European memebers of Inspectorate 29-1-1948 - 22-7-1949 — Page 185

CAH K (13)

184

Text of Letter from Members of the Hong Kong Police Inspectorate.

Dear Sir,

I am a Police Officer from the United Kingdom who, with about 50 others from various Police Forces of the British Isles transferred in 1946 to the Hong Kong Police Force, and I take this liberty of writing this letter to you in the hope that you will be able to further our claim for the recognition of our previous Police service with the appropriate Ministers of State.

We transferred here in answer to an urgent appeal through official channels for experienced Police Officers who were required to re-establish the Police system here on the re-occupation of the Colony after the late war; it then being considered that most of the pre-war Police Officers would be medically unfit by reason of internment to resume their duties.

Those of us who were from the Metropolitan Police Force were temporarily transferred here, one, from Devon, was seconded, and the remainder were obliged to resign from their parent Forces.

We arrived here in February and March of 1946, since which we have made constant representations with a view to effect the regularisation of our transfers according to U.K. standards, but without achieving any kind of success.

I attach a copy of our latest Petition on the subject with its unsatisfactory reply, if indeed it can be considered a reply at all.

As will be seen, our main intent is to secure the recognition of all our previous Police Service in the United King- dom for the purposes of pension, pay and seniority, but in this we have been singularly unsuccessful although, in some instances, that services amounts to as much as 14 years.

The recently appointed Salaries and Conditions of Service Commission by its published report does not permit us to recognise any Police Service prior to 1.1.47 NOT EVEN THAT SERVICE PERFORMED IN THIS COLONY IN 1946, and so by imposing a very definite break in the continuity of our service, deprives us of a very vital factor in our attempt to obtain recognition of all our previous Police service for the purpose of reckoning pensions, and in fact deprives some of us of as much as 16 years of continuous Police service.

points:-

1.

2.

I would respectfully draw your attention to the following

The Government of Hong Kong may, by virtue of the Regulations made under the Pensions Ordinance (H.K.) 1932, recognize our previous Police service for pension purposes.

Section 4 of the recently enacted United Kingdom Police Pensions Bill 1948 permits the Police Authorities of the U.K. to recognise our transfers and to assume responsibility for a

proportionate