POSTAL SERVICES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3812, 23 September 1936, Page 5

POSTAL SERVICES

MR BROADFOOT SEEKS INFORMATION.

Speaking in the House of Representatives, Mr W. J. Broadfoot, M.P. for Waitomo, said he wished to know when work on the new post office at Te Awamutu would begin, and whether a new telephone exchange would be erected there. The Postmaster-General the Hon. F. Jones): Tenders have been called, and a manual telephone exchange will be included in the building. Dealing with telephonic communication for back-blocks settlers, Mr Broadfoot said that many unemployed men had been settled on farms, and they were now getting to the stage where they were feeling the want of telephonic communication. In one block in the Rangitoto district there was a settlement called Rururu comprising fourteen families, and they were some ten miles out. There was an official line half way, and then a private line, and the charge per mile was beyond the resources of the new settlers and, in fact, many older settlers. The present post office at Te Kuiti was not a building to be proud of, continued Mr Broadfoot, and there was a lack of accommodation for sister departments in the place. Good work could be done by erecting a modern post office, providing accommodation also "for such departments as the Small Farms Department and the Agricultural Department.