Mr Pusinelli
Chairman
OSPA
63 Church Road
Hove
Sussex
BN3 2BD
May 1990
Thank you for your letters of 4 and 25 April to Robin McLaren about sterling safeguards for expatriate pensioners of the Hong Kong Government. I am replying since I have now succeeded him as the Assistant Under Secretary concerned.
I sympathise with your position, but I hope that you in time will appreciate the difficulty which the Hong Kong Government face on this question. The Hong Kong Government
has no policy of offering a sterling safeguard to their government servants in general. As the Chief Secretary points out in his letter of 15 February to Colvin Haye, it would be extremely divisive for them to contemplate a sterling equivalent for expatriate officers only. I am sure that you will recognise the force of time this.
For our part, we see no present justification for contemplating any sterling link or safeguard. The Hong Kong Dollar link with the US Dollar has proved extremely resilient, Hong Kong pensioners continue to do reasonably well, certainly in comparison with their UK public service counterparts and HMOCS staff in receipt of pensions from other territories. The US Dollar/Pound rate has certainly fluctuated, but I do not believe that these fluctuations have led to cases of hardship. case, the Hong Kong Government have stated that in case hardship were to arise, they will propose to ExCo that a small fund be established to provide one-off payments to pensioners in distress.
In any
NOBAEC
RJT McLaren
Burns
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