CURRENCY CHANGE

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31227, 26 November 1966, Page 2

CURRENCY CHANGE

Many Canterbury retailers would have to use cash registers still working in pounds, shillings and pence after the change to decimal currency next year, said Mr N. M. West, secretary of the Canterbury Retailers’ Association. Mr West was commenting on a statement by Mr O. R. Haddock, who told a decimal currency seminar that machines using the metric system would not be compulsory for 18 months. Therefore, housewives were warned that some retailers would use the old currency and they would have to watch their change. Assured by one member of the audience that housewives would not patronise retailers who used the old currency, Mr Haddock said that was exactly what he hoped to hear.

Mr West said that the public in general, and housewives in particular, could rest assured that the retail trade would strive to achieve the quickest change possible within the limitations of the machinery conversion programme. Co-operation would, however, be an essential element and there would be no point in either customer or shopkeeper being dogmatic on the continued use of the present coinage for a period. Any customer who was prepared to accept the guidance of staff trained to handle the old and new currency for goods marked either in dollars and cents or pounds, shillings and pence, would have no need to “watch her change.”