P.O. SHOWS RECORD BUSINESS YEAR.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17906, 23 July 1926, Page 4

P.O. SHOWS RECORD BUSINESS YEAR.

{Special to the “Star.”) WELLINGTON, July 22. The business of the Post and Telegraph Department has reached the highest point on record, states the annual report of the Department, presented in the House by the lion \\ - Nosworthy. The excess of receipts over expenditure was £690,840. The income from postages exceeded that of the previous year by £89,214, while telephone receipts show an increase of £113,065. Expenditure has been closely watched, ami economies have been effected with satisfactory results, the expenditure for the year being £6701 less than for the previous year. A fresh record is constituted lor new telephone connections, the 1925 record of 13,304 being eclipsed by a total of 13.368 for 1920. Automatic telephone exchanges in operation at March 31 provided service for 30 per cent of the total subscribers. A list of new bulidings and of alterations which will be required in the next decade has been carefully compiled, and work will be carried out strictly in order of urgency. Extensive alterations to the Palmerston North office and work on a new building at Auckland for accommodation of stores and workshops are hoped to be done this year, and towards the end of the financial year it is hoped to commence work on the new office at Dunedin, in which building other Government Departments will be housed. An endeavour is being made to build a new office at Napier. It is proposed to hold a radio telegraph conference next year at Washington, when New Zealand will be represented. Cables transmitted from New Zealand totalled 322,722. while 290,728 were received by overseas cables, this being an increase on last year of 38,471 forwarded and 38,792 received. THE CARELESS PUBLIC. In the course of the PostmasterGeneral's annual story of things that were* lost and (some of them) found, he sets out that there were 5670 inquiries for postal packets, and in more than half of those cases the packets were either traced or satisfactorily accounted for during the year. In 1020 cases the sender was responsible for delay; in 1185 cases the responsibility rested on the addressee, while in 427 cases it was found that delay was due to failure on the part of the Post Office. In the remaining 1089 cases inquiries disclosed either that there had been no delay or that there had been delay, but that it was not possible to fix responsibility. In 1949 inquiries no evidence of any kind could be obtained as to the disposal of the packets. This number includes packets mislaid either before posting or after delivery. It includes also misappropriations that may have taken place either inside or outside the Post Office. Actual losses amounted to .0013 per cent of the total number of articles posted. Despite warning notices, the public continues to post in unregistered packets articles of negotiable value. Two recent cases tof failure to register valuable packets are of sufficient interest to warrant special reference.' In one case an amount of £350 in £SO bank notes was forwarded as an unregistered packet, and in the other case a particularly flimsy envelope opened in the Dead Letter Office was found to contain a £lO bank note. There was nothing in the envelope to indicate by whom the letter had been posted.