letter despatch was introduced to Damascus. New air parcel despatches were also formed for-
Austria
Belgium
Bulgaria
Czechoslovakia
Denmark
Hungary
Italy (including Vatican City) Norway
Poland
Roumania
Sweden
France
Finland
Germany
Greece
Holland
Switzerland
Turkey
Yugoslavia
Negotiations were also put in hand for extending the air parcel service to East and South Africa and South Korea.
40. 34 bags of letter mail from the United Kingdom, Nigeria, Malaya, and 2 bags of parcel mail from Singapore and Sydney were completely lost due to the unfortunate incident in- volving the loss of a Cathay Pacific Airways plane near Hainan Island on the 23rd of July, 1954. Some mail for Hong Kong was also lost when an aircraft crashed on a journey from Brussels to Rome, but in this instance it was possible to salvage some of the correspondence and this was received for delivery in Hong Kong on the 14th of March, 1955.
PARCEL POST
41. Parcel traffic continued to increase despite the difficult trade position which existed in the Colony. The total number of surface parcels handled was 618,722, an increase of 94,241 over the previous year. Principal increases were to East and Central Africa, the United States, and Japan. The heaviest increases was to Africa, for which an increase of 35,700 parcels was recorded. This necessitated complete reorganization of the African Division in the parcel despatching section, and introduc- tion of new despatches to Albertville (Belgian Congo), Beira,
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