Delay On Salaries

BSIP's Civil Servants Restive Over Delay On Salaries

From our Honiara Correspondent Civil servants in the BSIP £ up in arms over the Colon Secretary’s continued delay in i vising their salaries. rp\VO years ago a Mr. Mayle visii A the protectorate, among otl Pacific areas, to investigate the ne for salary increases, and more tt six months have passed since his port is understood to have gone the Colonial Office.

In those six months, the Civil S vants Association in Honiara I made several representations to t Government, including a request : an interim award of 20 per cent. : all officers.

The High Commissioner, Sir Da’

Trench, has expressed his own pi sonal concern and that of the Gove; ment over the delay in announci a revision.

However, the general feeling amc civil servants is that something shou be done immediately to awaken t Colonial Office to the fact that pres* discontent could lead to a strike oi go slow attitude.

On October 8, about 300 peop attended a meeting of the Civil S! vants Association in Honiara to c cuss the continued delay in revisi salaries. This was the highest atten ance on record.

Nine Resolutions The meeting passed nine resoc tions. One was that the associati should write a circular letter on t salary revision to all UK Memb« of Parliament.

It was also resolved that an ii mediate interim award should sought from the Colonial Sec: tary and that unless definite formation about the state of impc mention of the salaries revision w received within two weeks, the as;< ciation should be empowered to stij its case in a letter to the leading dae newspapers in the UK.

Another resolution was that tr Colonial Secretary should be formed that the association expecth the revision of salaries to be baoj dated to June 1, 1960, when a ; vision was originally requested.