The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 1918. THE PERENNIAL MAIL QUESTION

Taihape Daily Times, 28 January 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 1918. THE PERENNIAL MAIL QUESTION

(With which is incorporated The Taihapo Post and Walmurlno News).

Such penuriousness as the Postal Department is guilty of in withholding a mail delivery from the old settled Ngawaka and Opaea districts is postively past understanding. The men, we were going to say " out there," but they arc only from three to six miles < from Taihape, have been without mail .Communication with the rest of the ■world, with slight intermission, for twenty years. For twenty years these pioneer settlers have worked to bring virgin country into a condition that is now equal to most of the best in New Zealand. For years and years they had no roads, and now only a portion of those they have are metalled. For two years past the Government spent some thirty pounds a year on a mail delivery, and because it is quite impracticable for a mail-carrier to keep and feed a horse, and give his time in'delivering this maila whole year for thirty pounds the Ngawaka and Opaea people have to get their letters when and how they can. One wonders what these settlers have done, what they have to expiate, that they are thus treated. Districts four times the distance from Taihape have their mail deliveries, and yet only four or five miles away men who have lived in the virgin bush for twenty years, until they have brought it into the highest state of cultivation, are condemned by the Government to be as much backblock settlers to-day as they were twenty years ago. We will venture to say that there is not another case of such extreme hadrship in all New Zealand. In searching for a reasonable excuse for this neglect we can find none, except that shibboleth and excuse for outrages and wrongs, the war. It is possible the Postal District is of opinion that the NgawakaOpaea proposition is not a paying one, but if so that can only be the case from want of knowledge, or an ignorance of figures as applied to industry. Out of this ill-treated district there comes from seven to ten thousand pounds worth of wool each year, to say nothing of meat and other produce, and yet such business as this does not warrant the Government giving even a mail delivery twice a week; thirty pounds is all the Government can afford to pay for it. Such parsimony, such miserliness, such a want of understanding, or downright ignorance and indifference is unprecedented, we believe, in the history of this country's settlement. Right through this busy season—shearing, meat-marketing and harvesting—are men adding thousands of pounds to the wealth of the country who cannot get letters, telegrams, or even a newspaper, unless they leave their work which Government precept indicates is so vitally urgent at this crisis in the Empire's history. •■ The Government cannot, in face of Avhat riches the men concerned add to the wealth of the country, afford to give another paltry fifteen pounds a year to enable them to get their letters and newspapers. This town and district are entitled to know why it is being thus treated. It may be that the Head of the Postal District has been ordered to keep down expenditure, and he permits this hardships tq

continue on that account. Perhaps those at the head of affairs are regarding this territory as it was ten or fifteen years ago, and have altogether lost touch with its needs and with its value to the State from a production standpoint. On the other hand the vast increase of settlement may have become too much for the sum total of the Department's organsing ability. It is common knowledge in this town that by reorganisation every part of the outlying district could have a mail delivery, and that places now only having a tri-weeldy or bi-weekly delivery could have their mails daily at a less cost than the Department is at present put to for the notoriously inadequate arrangements they have made # Last year this journal subsidised a mail to the Ngawaka-Opaea district, but as the white paper costs us more than we charge our subscribers for it, and as the Department has increased all news messages by one hundred per cent and postages by fifty per cent., the Government taking-way is more disastrous to us, than its penuriousness is to Ngawaka settlers. This country has ample cause to long for the day when all government by Commissions is at an end, and all enactments, in connection therewith are repealed. People are expressing a desire for the time when they will be able to approach the Minister in their postal and telegraphic troubles. The withholding of a mail delivery from the Ngawaka district for the sake of a paltry fifteen pounds is a meanness, or a matter of incapacity on someone's part, that, is, from a business viewpoint, beyond .one's conception. We trust Sir Joseph Ward will make some enquiry about this, because we are quite sure he would not be a party to the injury and hardship Ngawaka and Opaea settlers now have to endure. For quite an insignificant sum malls could be delivered, in Ngawaka and Opaea, or by reorganisation a daily mail could be given throughout the Taihape district at less cost than the Department is put to for the bizarre inefficient arrangement, it has drifted mtO_ Whereas, with no delivery quite a number of settlers, in the height of the meat, wool and harvesting seasons, each, have to waste two or three days a week to maintain connection . with markets and . the outer . world. We trust the Minister, himself, will hear the cry of these injured settlers, .which is an injury to the welfare of the country, and suggest his officers some means of improvement.. It might even be a case for the Efficiency Board ■ LiiiiLS'"'