Post_Office_1955-1956 — Page 15

CHRISTMAS POSTINGS

41. Early publicity and exhortations to "Post Early for Christmas" conducted through the Press and Broadcasting Services brought gratifying results in a more even spread of postings, but the overall picture was still one of more records, more congestion and later hours of working.

42. In the rush 10 days ending 23rd December, 1955, nearly 3,000,000 items were dealt with, an increase of 600,000 or 25% above the previous years record. In one day no less than 527,865 items were posted, the highest daily posting ever recorded.

43. This rush of local postings was further aggravated in the staff aspect by the receipt during the 10 day period of no less than 12,138 bags of mail from overseas, including 3,450 bags of parcels.

44. Both sorting and delivery staff were badly overworked to the point almost of exhaustion, but such is the growth of popularity of the Christmas season among the local population that still further increases are to be expected in the future, and for the first time, it is believed, in the history of the Hong Kong Post Office it will be necessary in future to recruit additional temporary staff for Christmas traffic.

45. This arrangement of temporarily increased staff is common practice in most postal administrations but for a variety of goods reasons has not so far been adopted here. The sheer bulk of Christmas mail, however, is now such that its intro- duction to Hong Kong becomes inevitable as normal handling is now beyond the capacity of overtime arrangements and average endurance.

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46. The Chinese New Year period similarly produced its crop of records, principally in the increase in the number of items dealt with from 879,804 in 1954/55 to 1,200,000 in 1955/56, or over 36%.

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