CONFIDENTIAL/ADMINISTRATION IN CONFIDENCE
Buckets
All in rosina 14 June
مان
MA
Travel
28. The Head of department spent about 6 weeks of 1975 in Hong Kong and Washington. He hopes that the Assistant will be able to visit Hong Kong this summer and that Mr Janvrin the junior of the two Hong Kong desk officers who has not yet been to Hong Kong, can visit the Colony later this year. He has made the point that he himself and all his staff are Diplomatic Service officers who, apart from Mr Duffy a DS officer who has served recently on secondment with the Hong Kong government, have no colonial experience or back- ground. It is very difficult for them to understand the Colony's problems. The Hong Kong government is self- contained and does not readily communicate; there is in
particular no system of reporting from Hong Kong such as a Diplomatic Service officer has come to expect from a DS post. It is the intention of the planning paper for Hong Kong that there should be a more intimate working relationship between the Hong Kong government officials below the Governor and the Hong Kong department in London. This can only be achieved if departmental officers at all levels can visit the territory from time to time. We support this view. Funds for travel are of course limited but we consider that HKIOD, in common with her Dependent Territories departments, have a good case for some prior consideration.
Accommodation
29.
Senior members of the staff and the Hong Kong section are accommodated in a pleasant suite of rooms on the second floor of King Charles street. The rest of the department are less fortunate. The PA and two $2s share a room with two FED shorthand-typists and complain of noise The three registry section clerks are part of a combined registry in an over-crowded room overlooking the Durbar court. The Indian Ocean section are housed in some squalor on the floor above. The three political officers share a dingy room with yellowing paint and a brown linoleum floor adjoining a more representational inner room used by their shorthand-typist and for the reception of visitors (including senior members of the Seychelles government). The aid officers have a rather nicer room nearby but complained that they had seen both a rat and a mouse in it and as a precaution against further appearances had covered crevices in the floor with boxes and a
Buckets on the staircase outside Mr Milton's room and in the registry and a massive crack in the registry ceiling remained from a leaking roof. Accommodation & Services department,
milk bottle.
who have seen our report in draft, have assured us that these
problems have now been remedied.
/30.
9.
CONFIDENTIAL/ADMINISTRATION IN CONFIDENCE
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