HILLSIDE MILK DELIVERIES

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27374, 12 June 1954, Page 5

HILLSIDE MILK DELIVERIES

SCARBOROUGH COMPLAINT A protest to the Metropolitan Milk Board about the, delivery point of milk to homes on Scarborough hill has been made by 30 or 40 residents of the area. In some cases, it is claimed, they have walks of 100 to 150 yards to collect milk and deposit their bottles. One of those who signed a letter to the board, Mr E. T. Salvesen, said the properties of those concerned with the change recently made in the delivery points were on the boundary of a track parallel to the main, formed road. The vendor had to deliver within six feet of the legal road boundary; he was in fact delivering in the middle of the surveyed road, but the formed road was only half a chain wide. The vendor had demanded that residents leave their bottles with the dustbins and so forth at the bottom of the tracks which ran from the formed road to the track above it, £aid Mr Salvesen. Scarborough residents found it difficult enough to walk up the hill with the many things not delivered, and in some households where there were only women or eld-, erly people, the problem was a very difficult one. He understood the vendor had been refused a request to be allowed to make an extra charge, Mr Salvesen said. It might be asked whether it would have been allowed in Wellington, and whether the ruling given by the chairman of the board (Mr j Mathison, M.P.), which, had led to the present situation, would not be the thin end of the wedge for all other tradesmen.

Only one day’s notice had been given of the change, Mr Salvesen said. That was on June 7, and it had been quashed. Yesterday morning the following notice had been received from the vendor: “With the Milk Board’s permission and support as from Monday, June 14, if you wish to receive delivery of milk, please leave your bottles at the foot of the track. From this date forward milk will no longer be delivered to the boxes up the tracks.”

During the war, when “things were tough,” residents had left their bottles at the foot of the hill, Mr Salvesen said, but things were not tough now. “Are the customers for the benefit of the milkman, the milkman for the benefit of the customers, or should there be mutual benefit, with a little give and take?” Mr Salvesen said.