Pressure On Bank And Post Off ice

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31880, 7 January 1969, Page 12

Pressure On Bank And Post Off ice

Two services at the national jamboree which have had a heavy demand on their facilities since the scouts started to arrive have been the special branches of the Post Office and the National Bank of New Zealand.

The business done daily by either of the two branches would pass that of their equivalents in a small town.

The post office opened two days before the official open-

ing of the jamboree to cater for the early arrivals and the bank was open on New Year’s Day. In the two days before the official opening and on the day of the opening, the post office dealt with more than 20,000 letters and 5000 firstday covers, each date-stamped by hand and with a special postmark.

Seventeen postal employees work at the branch, which is open for longer hours than other post offices (8 a.m. to 8 p.m. from Monday to Saturday, and on Sunday afternoons). A direct telegraph link is maintained with the Chief Post Office in Christchurch for telegrams, and there has been an average of about 200 telegrams a day in and out of the camp. On the day of the official opening more than 1000 visitors to the camp passed through the post office, and one of them took the opportunity to cash a pension cheque. Savings bank withdrawals at the post office number about 400 a day and incoming mail from overseas, particularly the United States, Australia and Japan, is becoming heavier as the jamboree proceeds.

A feature of the bank is that its staff of 11 are all present or former scouts and guides.

The official centre for changing foreign currency at the jamboree, the bank has not had much to do in this respect as most groups changed their money at their port of entry. Open from 8 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. every day, the bank finds its greatest pressure in general transactions, some 19,000 being conducted in a day. Since the jamboree began between 220 and 230 savings accounts have been opened at the bank, but many had been! opened for the jamboree at an earlier stage. All members of the Australian contingent doing so before leaving Australia.