OVERSEAS MAILS

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11655, 20 October 1923, Page 5

OVERSEAS MAILS

SPEEDING-UP DELIVERY LETTERS to 15 k sow ted on mail STEAMERS. STATEMENT BY MINISTER. 'Hie Hot. J. G. Coates ('PostmasterGeneral; unnoumed yesterday that mail sorting agents are to be reinstated on the San Pram isco and Vancouver mail steamers in order to .-peed up the delivery of mail m uior on its arrival in New Zealand. Mail sorting agents were employed by postal authorities for a number of years on the Transpacific .steamer 3, hut the system was abandoned as a measure of economy durin;: the war. *’A\'o hope to arrange matters in eon- i nevtion with the mad agents for the, next "'V.t!.:<>iu£: trip of the Niagara,” , stated rim Postmaster-General to a ‘‘Timed' representative yesterday. **ifc, being our endeavour to rut the schemeinto’operation in the shortest possible time But the companies, of course, require t*’ make arrangements tor the accommodation of the- mail agents. ‘•Another important point in connection with tho oversea mails, especially tlie mails for the South Island, is that we are negotiating with the company with tlm object of endeavouring to hasten the forwarding the mails south right- down to Invercargill at once, instead of their having to lie over in Christchurch on a Sunday. MAH. AGENTS TO PE REPLACED. ‘‘For very many years prior to 1917 rite mails from the Tinted Kingdom and the Tinted Slates of America, dispatched from Vancouver and San Francisco, were* sorted on board the mail steamers bv officers of the New Zealand Post ar.d Telegraph Department, who travelled ns mail agents on the boats; and it is now prrprvcd to revert to th;s quicker method of dealing with the mail-*. Arrangements will shortly he made for the mail agents to be carried <m the Vancouver and San Francisco ctenmer 3 , and as a result the mails from abroad them will he delivered to the jv»on!o of Now Zealand much more expeditiously than at present. when mails for places like, say, Hamilton and Palmerston North, are enclosed in hags addressed to Auckland and "Wellington, respectively. and on arrival in New Zealand have necessarily to he sorted before being disnrtehcd to their final destinations. Under the mail agent sy«tem. all correspondence for the cities and the larger towns of New Zealand wih he subdivided on the mail steamer: and by means correspondence will in mnnv rases he available to the public approximately 24 hours earlier than at present. “At the point of arrival in the Dominion of a vessel carwing a agent, correspondence will be available within a few hours. The system is. of cour?e, merely an extension of that which is now in > ogue on the Alain Trunk express trains throughout the Dominion, which gives such excellent' results in the expeditious handling of urgent and important correspondence, j A COMPARISON. “On a recent trio the R.M.S. Maun-j ganui arrived in Wellington at noon;: and, had a mail agent been on board, ; he would have had the northern portion i of the mail prepared for dispatch by: the Main Trunk express which left 45 minutes later. Owing, however, to! the absence of a mail agent, and the: consequent necessity for the sorting: being carried out after the mails had ( boon landed, it was not possible to ar-' ranee for their dispatch by that train. ; The" :iew system will for the future re-! duce the delays caused by suck occur-) tences." j