Chinese Staff
The Chinese staff at the General Post Office requires considerable augmentation, the postal districts are too large and should be amended as shown in Appendix L; instead of 16, 26 are required; 18 for districts as shown in M.
Six for Chinese letters and two for Chinese Registered letters; the present No 2 Postman secured for $500 and one another man. They could have a table beside the door in the second room in the Registration branch and the deliveries would be effected much more satisfactorily than at present.
Six more messengers are urgently required at the General Post Office at present " as I have represented elsewhere there is not a man to clean a window or wash floor. The only washing the Post Office ever gets is on a Sunday once a month after 9 a.m.
The name Messenger is a misnomer, these men are stampers, carriers of bags, packing and closing up mails. On the despatch of Contract mails for Europe the greatest scarcity exists; deliveries have to be delayed, postmen doing what messengers are supposed to do. When a postman is sick or on leave, a messenger has to take his place. Messengers are the under-studies of the postmen.
The work is being run now with so narrow a margin that almost any vacancies or absences threaten to dislocate
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