Needless Waste

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 266, 6 August 1931, Page 11

Needless Waste

Sir, —Here are two small examples of the utter waste which the present' Government, despite its voluminous protestations, seems to be making no effort to end. A Post Office Savings Bank account was opened for my boy when he was an infant. To-day, for the first time, he wished, at the age of 13, to make an additional deposit. No! Account is defunct, or deceased, or dormant, or some such technicality. The boy must apply to close the old account, withdraw the original deposit, and interest, and then apply to open a fresh account. Forms, correspondence, clerks’ time, new book, another journey to the post office, fuss, palaver, and so the game goes on. I was shown, the other day, an Education Department notice to the local school—li inches of print on the middle of a blank sheet of paper, notifying that the district high school at North Cape or Stewart Island wishes to adopt a hatband of green with a narrow edging of pink. “If ye know of any cause or just impediment why this hatband . ye are to declare it,” so the notice orders. That means, I suppose, a hundred or two of notices, specially printed, ditto of official envelopes addressed by hand with stamps to match. Meanwhile the, “Education Journal” or whatever it is called. is circulated twice a month to every school in the Dominion, and could surely be used for the dissemination of such weighty matters. Meanwhile our young teachers walk the streets: we have no money to spare for necessaries.—l am, etC ” “TAXED.” Wellington, August 1.