TNAG-0070-FCO40-106-Disturbances-in-Hong-Kong-propaganda-1968 — Page 82

CONFIDENTIAL

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19.

Considering its output and the long hours willingly worked the Unit is modestly supported by secretarial and other staff. Work does tend to come in fits and starts but at present all but the secretary in the Radio Hong Kong section are fully employed, as their over-time sheets testify. The slackness in the radio transcription operation can be taken up whenever we develop the use of this valuable medium.

20.

Since the actual personnel involved in these secretarial and office grades have fitted so well into the organisation it is proposed that they should now be transferred to the Unit.

21.

The only existing member of the staff not so far considered is Miss Celine Poon Kah-ling, an Executive Officer loaned to the Unit from the Establishment Branch as researcher. Mr. Downes who selected her very accurately judged the Unit's requirement for a well-educated, well-organised and lively-minded officer and Miss Poon has played an essential part in the Unit's operations to date. Her job has been to read as many original sources as are available to us, (the Chinese press as a whole, Communist papers in particular as well as leaflets, posters etc.) and to report on their political significance as a guide to the Unit's work. Miss Poon has done this work excellently but makes no secret of the fact that she looks forward to returning soon to what she sees as a more normal career. The Unit needs such a researcher. On the other hand it is not likely that anyone with exactly the right talents will easily be found by recruitment, certainly not by recruitment in an information officer grade, considering the existing qualifications.

22.

It is therefore suggested that Miss Poon should be retained for the rest of the first six months of the Unit's existence and that thereafter an attempt should be made to find from the ranks of Hong Kong University graduate Executive Officers, a similarly qualified officer for a similar attachment. This would initiate the pattern of attachment in the SPU at least, which, it is suggested, will be of value to the officers attached by broadening their horizons and giving them a feel for the political situation, to the organisations they belong to because of the experience they will take back to them and to the Unit by establishing its links with other parts of the Government organisation.

123.