LEGISLATORS are worried about publicising how much their secretaries and personal assistants earn.
They say it would add to political pressure on employees who are entitled to privacy about their salaries.
Legislators suggested at a special meeting yesterday that the public instead be told of the lump sum spent by members on staff salaries.
Amounts paid to individual staff would be broken down and submitted to the Treasury.
Earlier this month, legislators voted themselves a 123 per cent increase in allowances, taking them from $32,700 to $73,000 a month.
The chairman of the United Democrats of Hongkong, Mr Martin Lee Chu-ming, warned that legislators' employees might suffer political pressure in the run-up to 1997 and did not want their names and wages to be disclosed.
''I think the issue here is not as simple as it appears,'' he said.
