MAIL BAG STIGMA

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 733, 5 August 1929, Page 9

MAIL BAG STIGMA

BAGS LEFT UNGUARDED ON MANY STATIONS BRITISH ROBBERY MYSTERIES We have taken steps to recommend an improved system to the Post Office which, if adopted, will go far to obviate the pilfering of mails in future. The general body of Post Office employees is deeply concerned about the constant robberies from the mails. They are as anxious as the public that the stigma shall be wiped away from tlie records of a great public service. A “Sunday News” representative saw Mr. W. T. Lester, the new chairman of the Union of Post Office Workers, and asked him to comment upon the statement of Mr. J. W. Bowen, the general secretary, at the recent conference. Mr. Bowen bad declared: nationalisation and mechanisation were in progress at the Post Office. He demanded that the position of the employees should be guaranteed against conditions becoming worse. After the Post Office robberies men and women associated with the staff were victims in the matter of a system of which people outside the Post Office had no knowledge. The system of hand-to-hand checks had been abolished, and mail and parcel bags were being dealt with by a system which did not find favour with the Post Office employees. The system at present employed laid the way open to abuse by people who intended robbing the mails. Mr. Lester said the old system of making out a separate sheet for each consignment of mail bags, each bag being numbered and detailed and a duplicate receipt signed and checked when dell d at the station, was a means ol preventing robberies, although even with this method there was room for improvement. “The method,” said Mr. Lester, “has been abolished to save clerical work, in order to economise and put men on other duties. This cutting down of detailed clerical work might mean economy, but it was not good business, because there is no check on the bags sent. “Once we deliver mails and parcels to the railway stations they pass out of our hands. Although, in some stations, we employ Post Office detectives, mails are frequently left unguarded. They may even lie on the platform for hours awaiting arrival of a train. That is the fault of the system of passing the mails from the charge of the Post Office to the railway company concerned.”