AUCKLAND'S ANTIQUATED POST OFFICE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13414, 16 February 1907, Page 6

AUCKLAND'S ANTIQUATED POST OFFICE.

"A DISGRACE TO THE CITY."

GOVERNMENT'S POLICY OF

NEGLECT.

SOME COMPARISONS.

For many years the city of Auckland has been obliged to put up with a post and telegraph office that would he inadequate in any second-rate town in the colony. The claims of this city for reasonable post office accommodation have been persistently overlooked, in spite of representations and protests to the Government and in the House on the subject, and now the Department lias decided to make large and handsome extensions to Wellington's already tine post office, and again has ignored the claims of Auckland. 'the Auckland Post and Telegraph Office, it is a well-known fact, is the most utterly inadequate provision, in comparison with the postal business transacted, afforded in any town in NewZealand. A little seaport town called the Bluff, in the Awarua electorate, has a. post office of far more handsome appearance, than the building in Auckland.

THE WELLINGTON POST OFFICE. The Government has now decided to extend the present postal and telegraphic offices in Wellington by the erection of a new building occupying the whole of the square bounded by Custom House, Grey, Featherston, and Panama Streets. Already the Wellington Post Office, is a threestorey building, occupying a great block, and presenting a handsome and imposing front to the wharves at Custom House Quay, its tower and clock being one of the most conspicuous sights of the city's water front. An idea of the extent of the frontage may be gained from the fact that it has 48 large windows. Inside there are lofty, well-lighted rooms, with up-to-date desk and counter provision. The mailroom could almost swallow the Auckland mailroom. The staff officers have comfortable, convenient rooms, while in the Auckland office the only one decent room in the place is the chief-postmaster's office, and that is at the back of the building at the head of a narrow stairway. The Wellington extension may be necessary, but Auckland's need for better postal accommodation has been urgent for years. The population of Auckland city and suburbs last census was 82,101; that of Wellington, 63,807. In the rive vears Auckland increased by 24,485, Wellington by 22.049. Behind Auckland city there is ,a provincial district with 211,223 population, and behind Wellington the provincial district has 179,868 people. In the district under the control of the head of the Auckland postal service there are no less than 487 post offices, and there is no other postal district in the colony with more than half this number of offices. Auckland has 188 land services and 11 sea services, and the money order and postal note business of the whole district has to be transacted at Auckland city. THE AUCKLAND OFFICE. The Auckland Post and Telegraph Office, in the first place, is an eyesore, a dirty, rematite, red, two-storey structure, with facings of bilious yellow. Inside it has scarcely one redeeming feature, and private employers compelling employees in factories to work under the same conditions would have to face the ignominy of Police Court prosecutions and lines. No private, employer in Auckland city or any other centre would be allowed to even ask his employees to put up with a luncheon-room such as the miserable cellar apartment alloted as a luncheon-room to the post office employees in Auckland. At the back of the budding there are narrow stairways and cellar rooms that would perhaps be in keeping if the building were an old Norman castle, instead of a post office. The parcel-room is about 20ft bv 20ft, 'ant! frequently it has to be stacked 12ft to 14ft high with parcels. When an English mail arrives there may be 100 cases of parcels, and if the room is already full the congestion is better imagined than described. Four times the space would not be anything too large for this department. In the money order and savings bank department a small army of clerks are engaged in an apartment that would only be a passageway in any up-to-date wholesale office. The mailroom is not half large enough for the sorting work that lias to be carried on. and the mail baskets from the front posting-boxes have to be carried up a narrow, winding stairway to the sorting-rooms. The supervisors of the mailroom have a sort of box-like apartment with glass front, but everywhere the employees are cooped up like rabbits in a warren. The parcels despatch-room, below the mailroom floor, is about the size of a goods lift, and yet the vast parcels traffic has to pass through there. In the telegraph office the same congestion has been experienced, and the Department has now been compelled to rent two rooms, about 15ft bv 20ft each, in Hobson Buildings, next door, and break through the Mall in order to find some of the space so urgently required. The wonder is how ever the postal and telegraphic staff manages to carry on tic immense amount of work it has to deal with in such an utterly inadequate building.