Post Office Short Staffed

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 78, 6 August 1948, Page 5

Post Office Short Staffed

BOARD IS MAIN PROBLEM, SAYS P.M. “I want a typiste, I want four exchange operators, I want a message boy and I want another counter clerk—and I have not been able to locate any who will take on the jobs,” said the Whakatane Postmaster, Mr S. W. Hills, yesterday when asked about the response to the advertisement for more postal staff. He said he has had, since the running of the advertisement, one application for a job.

Continuing, he said the people of "Whakatane were always complaining about the service they get from the local postal staff and from the • exchange. This he said was due to the difficulty found in getting sufficient staff to do the jobs as they : should be done. Nearly all the employees are working on two jobs, and this does not tend for good service, because it limits the amount of time allowed to be spent on each • customer. Mr Hills attributed the main cause of the shortage to the lack of good, • cheap board for those he bought in from outside districts. He said he had had a number of people employed in the office yet they had all left in a short while because they became sick of the conditions and price of their lodgings, which were always hard to locate in the first place. “What this town needs is a good boarding house or a hostel* run on good homely lines, and :yet within reach of the* pockets of the juvenile worker,” he said. “As the whole town is short of junior labour it is up to the town as a whole to get on to the job and do something about it.” “There are members of the exchange staff who have not had a holiday for over two years because of the shortage of staff and their having to work double time and on broken shifts. The exchange boards .are hardly ever fully manned so it is impossible for the town to get adequate service.”