§ SIR SEYMOUR KING (Hull, Central)To ask the Secretary of State for India whether his attention has been called to the complaints of the condition of the Burma police force expressed in two memorials to the Viceroy asking for
† See (4) Debates, cxxxii, 616.1037 relief; whether he is aware that the most junior assistant superintendent in the force, whose pay is 300 rupees permensem, is in his 16th year of service, and that there are below him seventeen officiating asssistants with an average service of about fourteen years whose permanent pay is 140 rupees, that of forty district superintendents in the force twenty-three are lumped together in the lowest grade, of whom six have been in the grade for thirteen years while four or five others have been in it for about ten years, that only four officers retire on account of age within the next five years, so that by 1909 every assistant superintendent will have had over twenty years service, and whether, having regard to the special and local character of these grievances arising from this condition of the service, he will consider the advisability of issuing orders for their redress in anticipation of the general orders which may have to be passed on the recommendations of the Police Commission.(Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) The memorials referred to in the Question have not come before me; but I observe that the Viceroy, in his speech on the 30th March last, at the meeting of the Legislative Council when the Budget was under discussion, stated that he was aware of the condition of affairs in the superior police service in Burma, and would consider the question of taking measures to apply a remedy independently of the general reforms in the police which the Government of India hoped to introduce as the result of the consideration of the Report of the Police Commission.