Civil Servants Again Enjoy Full Salaries: Compulsory Pasteurization of Milk Postponed From A SpecIaL
Hongkong, July 9.
Atter having suffered salary cuts for a period of eighteen months, Hongkong civil servants are now enjoying full restoration of the levy. The original cause of the deduction, which was on a variable percentage basis, according to the scale of salary enjoyed, was the slump in the sterling value of the dollar, which meant a tremendous increase in the vote for emoluments due to the fact that officers recruited from Home are p: en a sterling basis, Begun on January 1, 1936, the levy was, by reason €f the obscure financial position of the Colony, continued on a modified form for the first sx months of the current year, this step being reluctantly approved by the Secretary of State, The financial position has, however, now so greatly improved (revenue for the first half of the year showing an increase of over $1,300,000 compared with the same period last year) that it was deemed possib: e to remove the levy altogether as from July 1.
The Colonial Treasurer, in moving abolition of the levy at a meeting of the Legislative Council, said its continuance was felt to be a hindrance to the recruitment of new officers and a bad advertisement of the Colony financial nding. There was no opposition to the motion—a circumstance which has occasioned some surprise. One journal, indeed, spoke of the "almost indecent histo and silence" with which the rosel: tion was carried throug', an referred to the fact that no montia: was made by the Government spokesman of such matters as the reduction of special allowances which many civil servants enjoy, or of the greater substitution of dollar-paid for sterling-paid officers which the public had been led to believe would be put into force.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.