69er, a quick reply to some of your reposts as dinner beckons though I think CxChildLabour answered one of them in a more deliberate fashion:
The recruitment pool....if there are not enough CEPs coming from HKG, do it the old fashioned way...hire DESO. It worked beautifully, though of course the company have changed course, in line with their future business plan.
The SLS deduction that I spoke of is with regards to take home pay, not basic salary. With the extra benefits that expats get, the SLS deduction caused a more severe cut to the total take home pay of the CEP vs. the expat. I think the AOA have the figures and I'm quite sure that I saw the 7% vs 3.5% somewhere in the papers, though I will grant that the papers do take liberties sometime. In any case, highlighting the deduction vs. total income was what I was getting at, and I promise you I didn't pull those figures out of thin air. Now just trying to remember where I saw them, anyone else feel free to post the real figures.