Fiji’s Snail-Pace Airmail

Prom Our Own Correspondent

Lautoka, Sept. 25.

IF Lautoka were 1,500 miles from.

Suva, instead of being 150 by road and less airline, there might be some excuse for mail delays.

Air mail letters from Australia which arrive in Suva on the Satur day Qantas plane are available to post-office box holders there within an hour or two of arrival. If those same letters have a Lautoka address,, they do not arrive at their destina tion until Tuesday.

What happens to them in the interval is a secret known only to the post office. Presumably they wait in Suva until Monday and then meander off around the island in an Indian bus.

Fiji Airways are running a twice a-day service between Suva and Lautoka including Sundays. As these mails do the first few thousand miles in a matter of hours, why not complete the job and send them the last 150 in the fastest possible time.

Mails for Suva which come or go through Nadi by BCPA and Pan American are subject to the same frustrating delays, although over seas airmail costs here are far in excess of Australian rates.

There is far too much bus mindedness (or cutter-mindedness) in certain official quarters in this Colony.