TELEGRAPH CHARGES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22609, 28 June 1935, Page 8

TELEGRAPH CHARGES

The Postmaster-General has not presented a very good defence of the zonal system of telegraphic charges. There has, he says, been a very heavy loss on the telegraphic service during the past ten years. The returns which are supplied with the annual report of the Post and Telegraph Department are not sufficiently detailed to enable us to check Mr Hamilton's figures, but, since the purpose with which the zoning system of charges was introduced was to produce additional revenue, we accept the statement that the telegraph branch of the t service has, unlike the postal branch, been run at a severe loss. When, however, the Minister asks us to believe that an increase in the volume of telegrams and a corresponding proportionate increase in revenue in the past two months are " a practical indication that the present scheme is a balanced one, fairer to the users, and that, as a whole, they are rinding it more suitable," he is placing a strain on our credulity that is greater than it can bear. He takes no account of the consideration that, no matter what the system of charges may be, an increase in the volume of telegraphic business is the necessary and inevitable accompaniment of a revival of trade, such as he will himself agree is being manifested. The improvement in telegraphic business had in fact shown itself in 1933-4 before the system of charging a zonal rate instead of a flat rate was introduced, and, in face of this, an attempt to justify the zonal system by reference to an increase in the volume of business this year is somewhat futile. The Minister occupies slippery ground, moreover, when he says that a system under which a flat rate, representing the all-round cost, was imposed would have the effect that many telegraph users would be unfairly penalised by having to pay a proportion of the cost of service given to others. For the precise effect of the zoning system is that many telegraphic users are penalised for the benefit of others. The Minister, however, will never succeed in satisfying the public that a zonal system of telegraphic charges is desirable or necessary when another branch of the department over which he presides is able to carry a letter to London by a subsidised service at the same rate as that charged for the delivery of a letter from one address to another in Dunedin in circumstances entailing in many cases the operation only of sorting the letter into a private box at the post office.