New Papua-NG Pensions

Proposals Under Fire

From Our Own Correspondent

Port Moresby, Oct. 5.

THE Papua-New Guinea Public Service Association has received details of the pension arrangements which will be applied to pre-war officers of the Papuan Public Service or the New Guinea Public Service who returned after the war to join the Provisional Admin istration. Local reaction to the proposals is not favourable.

The proposal is that officers shall receive a pension at the pre-war rates for every year of service, calculated on their pre-war salary, plus one-eightieth of the difference between their pre-war salary and their present salary in respect of each year they have served with the Provisional Administration.

In the pre-war Papuan Service officers were entitled to retire after 20 years’ service. They were paid a pension at the rate of l/42nd of their salary on retirement for each year of service (with a maximum of 28/42nds). Although Papuan salaries, even after 20 years ser vice, were not lavish, the pension scheme allowed an officer to withdraw from the tropics at a comparatively early age, with a useful financial safeguard.

The scheme for officers who have re turned to the Provisional Administration is understood to provide for the payment of a pension calculated as follows:—for each year of service until the date of retirement, officers will receive l/42nd of the salary they were receiving at the date when civil administration was ter minated (early 1942); then, for each year of service since the resumption of civil administration in 1945, l/80th of the difference between their pre-war salary and their present salary.

Many Papuan officers have been hang ing on in the Service in the hope that the pre-war pension formula would be applied to their greatly increased, but still not lavish, post-war salaries. They may perhaps have expected too much, but they claim that the new arrangement is far too small; that 1942 salaries are an unfair basis of calculation, as most of them would normally have had promo tion; and that, at the cessation of Civil Administration, salaries were under re view, and a reclassification was antici pated.

It seems clear that, although officers, at the time of retirement, will have larger salaries than pre-war, in either Papua or New Guinea, their pension pay ments will amount to less than they would normally have expected from un interrupted service with the former Administrations, allowing for promotions, proposed reclassifications, etc. .It is understood that the Public Ser vice Association intends to seek legal advice. They claim that they were guar anteed conditions not less favourable than those they had previously enjoyed.

It is rumoured in Port Moresby that many of these frustrations are due to the vetting of External Territories’ finances by Commonwealth Treasury advisers.