BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Tuesdays and Fridays. TUESDAY, MARCH 16, 1948 "NUMBER, PLEASE!"

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 30, 16 March 1948, Page 4

BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Tuesdays and Fridays. TUESDAY, MARCH 16, 1948 "NUMBER, PLEASE!"

For a good while now it has J been known that there are good grounds for hoping the new telephone exchange at Whakatane will be in„ operation byJuly. Certainly, every citizen who has to rely on the telephone service to any considerable extent must hope it will be. Therefore, the PostmasterGeneral's assurances to Mr Sullivan, published on Friday,- will come as welcome news to this community. His letter mentions the congested state of the telephone cables and lack of vacancies on the switchboards as the main difficulties in the way of extending the service here, and those factors must no doubt be taken into account by existing subscribers who find the present service is not all they would like it to be.

It is indisputable that the present service leaves much to be desired. It is easy to be impatient. All too easy to be critical. Most people realise that the P. and T. Department has serious staff difficulties, and it is a safe assumption that a new exchange would not be on the way if the old one had not proved itself inadequate. Still,-there is justification for the belief that it should not be necessary for busy people whose time is valuable to sit on the end of a dead telephone for minutes at a stretch. Minutes can be and are important. There' seems little doubt that the new exchange will be a vast improvement, and equally little doubt that it will be welcomed with relief by a business community that has found the struggle to "make do" with the existing facilities most trying at times.

Just what the struggle inside the telephone exchange must be like can only be guessed at by the outsider, but it is easy imagine, from the limited facilities and somewhat patchy results, that the staff must be having serious problems and are well deserving of sympathy and a little more kindly understanding than they sometimes get. To remain unfailingly courteous in the face of impatience and sometimes even abuse takes patience and strength of character out of the ordinary, and for that the exchange clerks should be given full credit.

It would seem, then, that until July at any rate subscribers and exchange staff have a mutual problem, calling for co-opera-tion, patience with each other and full realisation that all parties concerned have their worries.