SANATORIUM MAILS.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18441, 23 July 1925, Page 2

SANATORIUM MAILS.

POSTAL DEPARTMENT CRITICISED

"It eeems hopeless to got anything like fair treatment from the local Post , Office, and I strongly recommend that the B'oaid should a}rprpach tho Postmaster-General, and if necessary should appeal lo members of Parliament for Ohriatchurch lo see.whether vie cannot get a fair deal in this matter. The. Postal .Department has never given us the proper service which we have a right to expect, arid it now proposes to cut down even uuc pour service.'' Tho medical Dinctor of Tuberculosis Institutions, itx. U. J. BlacKmore, protested in those words, to tho A orth Canterbury, iioapital Board yesterday against a- suggestion iy tho 'Chief Postmaster that the Sanatorium a motor \ chicle should collect second-class mail .'natter ironi me office.

l)r. Blackmore's letter stated:— "All mails for these institutioas are delivered at the Coronation Hospital, and we arc put to -tho expense and inconvenience of taking tho whole of the . mail matter to . the upper institutions, a distance of over I a mile "and a quarter, twice daily. On an average there are probably nearly i.50 people in the various institutions. If iheso people were living in private houses on this hill, with a'd average of three persons in .each house, there would bo something like 120 houses on the hill, and I think there would then be no question whatever that the Postal Department would deliver letters and parcels to these houses. •. . . . Backblocks iarmers can now have their mails delivered to them at their doors, while we, who live in the suburbs of Christchurch, not only do not have our mails delivered to us directly, but we are actually being asked to collect a good part of jt at the Post Office. .This'would mean that in the case of parcels sent by firms in the town to patients or employees in these institutions, the Post Office would receive these parcels over their counter, charge full -postal rates on them, and then hand them over to us when wo called for them. In other words, the Postal Department would do nothing whatever for the rates paid to take the parcels over the counter and hand them back again, yet for the same amount they charged they would he willing to deliver these parcels in the district north of Auckland if they were addressed therewith the object of endeavouring to get more consideration in the delivery of mails to the institutions en the Cas -mere Hills the letter has Wen forwarded to <he Post-Wer-General. Wellington and to the member fcr th* Lyttelton electoral.