Fiji Air-Mail
p. 20 · Read in the full issue
Exorbitant Rate Now Reduced
rE Red Tape Wallahs who arrange such things as postage rates have had a change of heart. The air mail postage between Fiji and New Zea land and Fiji and Australia has been reduced.
Until August, 1945, air-mail letters were carried between Fiji and New Zea land for ordinary postage and between Fiji and Australia for sd. (sid. from Australia to Fiji because Australia has a id.-per-ounce war surcharge on all postages); then, for reasons that have never been successfully explained, some one decided that the rates should be 1/2 and 1/5 per half-ounoe, respectively— and this for a service that was neither regular nor predictable. (See “PIM,”
November). However, we are now in formed (but again without explanation), that from January 1, 1946, the rate will be sd. per half-ounce between Fiji and New Zealand, Samoa, Tonga and Nor folk Island; and lOd. per half-ounce be tween Fiji and Australia.
The Fiji-Australia rate is still too high; before the war it was possible to send a letter all the way to Britain for no more than the internal air-mail post age rate. There is no good reason why it should cost any more to send an air mail letter to Fiji than it does to New Zealand (surface mail costs are the same within the whole British Empire) other than the fact that the New Zealand- Fiji end of the air link is still in New Zealand Government hands.
Something seems to have delayed the “dawn of the Pacific air-age” which every ranting politician has promised us for four years. That something could easily be the reluctance of both the Aus tralian and New Zealand Governments to call in private enterprise; they still hope that they will be able to pluck a few nationalised plums for themselves.
IT was announced in New Zealand on December 20 that letters would be received in the Dominion for despatch to Tonga, Western Samoa, Norfolk Is land. New Caledonia and New Hebrides, as well as Fiji. All are at the rate of sd. per ounce, although no regular mail ing schedules can be issued, it is stated.