50. The upward trend of air mail traffic continued. An estimated total of 50 million letters and packets were handled, showing an in- crease of 17.7% over last year's traffic. A novel development has been the extensive employment of aerogrammes by Mail Order firms for promotional and advertising mailings to the U.S.A. in lieu of the more expensive printed paper air mail service.
51. Parcels exchanged with oversea countries totalled 2.72 million or 13.18% above the 1968-69 level.
52. The outward air parcel traffic rose by 20.63% to a total of 0.87 million items and amounted to 39.23% of all parcels despatched from the Colony.
53. Inward parcels passed the half million mark, of these 34.3% came by air.
54. There were 15 cases of violation of mails during transmission to and from the Colony. In no case was mail violated whilst in the custody of the Department.
Christmas Mails
55. A noteworthy increase occurred in the letter and parcel mails sent abroad, particularly by air, in the two weeks preceding Christmas.
56. The corresponding increase in inward seasonal traffic was not easy to discern because unusually large quantities of Christmas air mail items were received after Christmas, especially from the United Kingdom and North America, and Christmas parcels and greeting cards were still arriving by surface mails well into the New Year.
ACCOMMODATION
57. Accommodation currently presents a serious and intractable problem at certain of our main mail-handling offices and is the limiting factor in the Department's maintaining a high standard of service whilst coping with a growth in traffic of formidable magnitude.
58. In the course of the year all letter sorting/delivery work was transferred from the hutments at Tsim Sha Tsui to Kowloon Central Post Office where working conditions for the staff are more tolerable albeit still somewhat crowded. The hutments had to be retained in use to relieve the counter service at Tsim Sha Tsui Post Office and ease
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