P. AND T. ESTIMATES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5488, 16 October 1929, Page 2

P. AND T. ESTIMATES.

SALARIES DISCUSSED. MR. A. M. SAMUEL IN THE HOUSE In the Parliamentary Committee on Post and Telegraph Department Estimates debates last week Mr A. M. Samuel, M.P., made reference to the salaries of the lower paid servants of the department. There were many young men in the service 22 years of age, with five or six years’ service, in receipt of £lO9 a year, which worked out at about £2 Is lOd a week, said Mr Samuel. There were others between 18 and 19 years, with two or three years’ service, who were on the £57 a year mark. Some of these had recently been promoted to £7O, and these men were between 20 and 21 years of age. He was speaking with a knowledge of the facts, as he had the records of several men who were in his district. Some of these men were on transfer from one place to another on a salary of £7O per annum, and surely the Postmaster-Gen-eral would realise that it was impossible for a young man to live away from home, pay board and lodging, and keep himself on such a salary, especially if he was the son of working people more or less dependent upon his earnings. The Post and Telegraph Service, continued Mr Samuel, was in watertight divisions, which allowed of no promotion outside them, and the men got to a certain salary and then piled up and piled up until the position became untenable. After ten years’ service in the General Division the men reached £240 a year, and there they remained, though last year the department had made a profit of upwards of £500,000. The Minister would say, of course, that all but £40,000 of that had been written off for depreciation, but he maintained that that need not have been written off. Certainly not all of it. The figures showed that a sum of £470,000 to £480,000 had been invested as a set-off against depreciation when it might easily have been accounted as profit; and more consideration should be shown to the employees of a department making such a tremendous profit. The last re-classification, he thought, had taken place in 1924, and re-classification was due again by statute last April, but had not been carried out. He wanted to know if the Government was evading its responsibilities in that direction, and if it intended to carry out the re-classifica-tion as required by statute.