I wish to deal with an item that appears in these Estimates for the first time. Although we dealt with it partly in the Additional Estimates earlier this year it is a new item. We are being asked here to vote the sum of R340,000 to meet the running expenses of an external radio service. Sir, we are in possession of certain facts in regard to this new development. We know that four new transmitters of the most powerful type available in the world are going to be erected and that the first transmitter will be erected towards the end of this year and will be beamed in the first instance towards the African Continent. We also know from the hon. the Minister that the responsibility for the technical part of these programmes will be carried by the S.A.B.C., but the Minister has made it quite clear that the entire responsibility for the service itself, for what is transmitted over the service, will be that of the Government. Sir, whenever we have discussed broadcasting matters in this House we have always been told by the Minister that the broadcasting services are conducted by an independent statutory body with which he cannot interfere. In this particular case that rule goes by the board. In other words, as far as these services are concerned the Minister will be directly responsible both for the manner in which they are run and for the material that will be put over the air in these foreign services; that is to say, the Minister will be responsible for the policy. I want to emphasize that the Minister has made it perfectly clear that he as Minister of Posts and Telegraphs will accept full responsibility for the policy that will apply as far as the messages broadcast by these transmitters are concerned. I want to say quite frankly that I am concerned and afraid of the consequences of such a policy. Sir, it is going to cost thousands of rand to operate these transmitters. These transmitters will in fact become instruments of our foreign policy; they will be the mirrors in which many people in the emergent countries in Africa will have their first glimpse of South African conditions and of the peoples of South Africa. We know that as far as the African Continent is concerned we are faced with considerable animosity as a result of a great deal of unjustified propaganda about our country. But what I am afraid of is that if the policy is in the hands of this Minister we may find that material will be broadcast which is in fact going to bedevil South Africa’s foreign relations further as far as the African Continent is concerned. Sir, we on these benches have pleaded for many years for the institution of the service. We have recognized the need for it for many years. But we are well aware of the racial prejudices and the narrow outlook revealed by the hon. the Minister in his public utterances in this House and on public platforms. If this Minister is going to be charged with the sole responsibility of conducting these services, then I fear for South Africa’s future. I think we should make a sincere appeal to the hon. the Prime Minister to reconsider the question of placing the responsibility for this service in the hands of this Minister. Sir, I do not want to deal again with the issue that I raised with the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the hon. the Minister of Information by way of questions as to whether or not they have been consulted about this external radio service. It is quite clear from the answers received from these Ministers that the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs has consulted neither the Minister of Information nor the Minister of Foreign Affairs with regard to the presentation of these programmes, which will be entirely his responsibility and which will mirror South Africa to the peoples of Africa through the eyes of the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs. We know there is a great deal of prejudice. May I also say this—I don’t say it in an offensive sense—that we have what I term the political lop-sidedness of the viewpoints of the hon. the Minister. Because of these prejudices we on these benches consider the Minister entirely unsuited to have the sole responsibility of mirroring, through powerful radio transmitters, the picture of South Africa to the rest of the world, particularly to the people of Africa.

There are certain other issues which arise from this. Seeing that the Minister has this responsibility I want to put certain questions to him: Where is he going to get the trained personnel to conduct these programmes? Who is going to have the actual responsibility of the programmes that will be transmitted? How long will these transmitters operate in a 24-hour period? Is it the Minister’s intention to obtain personnel who are capable of speaking some of the major Bantu languages of the peoples of Africa? In what language media will these broadcasts be done? Who will be primarily responsible for the messages and the verbal pictures of South Africa which these transmitters will present to the world? It is no use saying that this will not be a propaganda service. Talks will be presented on these services. There will not only be music but talks as well because without talks the service, as a propaganda service to tell the truth about South Africa, is worthless. Who is going to be responsible for the talks that will be presented over these services? Is it going to be entirely ministerial responsibility or will the Minister of Information also have some responsibility? He is now charged with the responsibility of giving a true picture of South Africa to the rest of the world but in this instance he is completely excluded by the Minister’s own admission in this House. It stands in Hansard, namely, that he has in no way been consulted in regard to the programmes that will be broadcast—neither has the Minister of Foreign Affairs. After all, Sir, the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs is primarily charged with the responsibility of negotiating with and presenting the picture of South Africa to the rest of the world. We now have the ridiculous situation that the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs will be solely responsible for everything that will be sent over these transmitters in regard to South Africa. We have no other information. On a former occasion the Minister has refused to give us his viewpoints and to tell us how this picture will be presented, who will do the talking and so forth.

Then there is the other aspect: The cost of running this service is going to run to well over R 1,000,000 per annum. We are now asked to vote R340.000 in respect of one transmitter. It is obvious that to operate four of them will cost well over R1,000,000 a year. That is almost 50 per cent of the vote of the Minister of Information.

Why so aggressive?

The hon. member would also be aggressive if he realized what could happen; if he realized what further difficulties could be created for South Africa through the political faux pas that could be made by this Minister over the air to the 150,000,000 people of Africa. We have enough trouble in our own country. We are enough aware of the narrow viewpoints adopted by this hon. Minister in regard to political issues in our own country, without his taking power to transfer his narrow political views of humanity and the people of South Africa to the rest of the people of Africa.

His views of humanity?

Yes; we know the racial prejudices of this Minister. Is the Minister going to convey his racial views to the rest of the peoples of Africa? What will happen to South Africa’s relationship with the rest of the continent? Hon. members must remember that these services are going to extend further. We are not only going to talk to the people of Africa but to the people of America when the second transmitter comes into operation; we are going to talk to the people of the East. We are going to do so with some of the most powerful radio transmitters in the world. I doubt whether there is another country of our size which has radio stations with a total power of 1,000 kilowatts. There are very few examples; I think you can count them on your fingers as far as the rest of the world is concerned. These will be some of the most powerful radio transmitters in the world and they will operate on a beamed service. The responsibility which the hon. the Minister will carry on his shoulders in regard to this matter is no light responsibility. Yet we get these narrow viewpoints; this narrow presentation of views. That is what we on this side of the House fear. We on this side of the House feel that whoever will be responsible for these services should fall directly under the hon. the Prime Minister’s office. That is how important we regard them as far as the interests of South Africa are concerned. [Time limit.]

It seems as though the Opposition now want to change over to the S.A.B.C.

It has nothing to do with the S.A.B.C.

I want to come back to what the hon. member for Orange Grove (Mr. E. G. Malan) said yesterday in connection with the Post Office staff. He painted such a dark picture yesterday that one would have thought that the sun would never again rise for the Post Office staff. I think it has become necessary for us to draw the attention of the Post Office staff to the position of this staff in the years when the United Party was in power. The National Party has now been in office for 17 years. This means that those of the Post Office staff who are 35 years old to-day were at that time in the matriculation class. Those who are 17 years of age to-day were not yet born. In other words, they do not know how really bad the position of the Post Office staff was under the United Party Government. The hon. member for Drakensberg (Mrs. S. M. van Niekerk) says that I am always living in the past but I think it is time for us to go back into the past for a moment. I think that she is ashamed of what actually happened in the past and of the humiliating way in which the United Party treated the Post Office staff at the time.

I should like to take hon. members back to the year 1947 when the United Party was in power. When the Vote of the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs was under discussion at the time, Senator C. A. van Niekerk had the following to say in the Other Place (translation)—

I say: Where that official had to do the work of three officials did the then Minister show any appreciation of his services? Senator van Niekerk went on to say (translation)—

This was at a time when we did not have the wonderful economic upsurge that we are experiencing in the country to-day.

Tell us something new.

I do not blame the hon. member for Kensington (Mr. Moore) for being ashamed of the past. Hon. members opposite are acting to-day as though they treated the Post Office staff like angels in Heaven at the time. I think that it is necessary for the Post Office staff to know that the previous Government treated them far worse than this Government is treating them.

I should like to deal briefly with the hon. member for Drakensberg. She is a very interesting person to my mind. She is always interested in the small things. I do not blame her for it because a woman is, of course, a person who likes to do needle-work. She is always looking for a needle in a haystack. She told us a story yesterday which I do not think she could tell again. This was the story of a friend of hers who had to telephone so many times. I want to give the hon. member some good advice. I think that she should tell that friend of hers, or the friend of her friend—it is an involved story—to pay her telephone account and then she will receive a reply very soon. There are cases in which people neglect to pay their telephone accounts.

I should like to draw attention to the tremendous expansion in our telephone services. In 1948, 33,024,000 trunkline calls were made in South Africa. That service expanded to such an extent that in 1964-5 there were 103,500,000 trunkline calls. This proves to you. Sir, how that service has expanded. The number of calls has trebled.

The hon. member for Orange Grove delivered a tirade here because the telephone calls which one makes from public call-boxes have now been increased from cents to 5 cents. He contended that it was the hon. the Minister’s fault that this had happened. He said that the Postmaster-General wanted to avoid it. Was it fair of him to say that? Does the hon. the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs determine telephone tariffs? It is the Postmaster-General and the responsible officials who have to determine whether the service is a paying one or not. If they find that it is not paying, they take the matter to the hon. the Minister for ratification. I take it that this is the way in which things are done and that that is what happened in this case as well. Call-box earnings in 1960-1 amounted to R740,000 and the amount expended on that service was Rl, 100,000. In other words, there was a loss of R360.000. Hon. members opposite now say that a terrible injustice is being committed against the public. Sir, do you know what this additional amount of 2| cents will actually mean to the Post Office? It will bring in the small amount of R 150,000.

Out of the pocket of the poor man.

The hon. member is being very unfair in making that irresponsible remark. I want to point out to her that the person who makes use of the public telephone does not pay telephone rental. This service is at their disposal and they can make a call whenever they want to. Many persons may perhaps make one call in a month. The cost connected with the maintenance of those call-boxes is, as I have already indicated, very great indeed. That service is absolutely unprofitable and the service cannot be continued unless the losses are reduced. They will now be reduced considerably although the service will still be run at a loss. I want to make an appeal to hon. members of the Opposition not to be petty. [Time limit.]

We have just listened to a most extraordinary speech from one of the leading speakers on the Government side. Surely the position must be at a very low ebb when the hon. member tells us that the postal and telephone rates are fixed by the Postmaster-General and not by the Minister. I wonder whether the hon. the Minister will confirm that.

With his consent.

Does the Minister control the policy of his Department or does the Postmaster-General? Surely the position is that the Minister controls policy and I hope he is going to confirm that because if he does not I don’t see why we should have a Minister. When the hon. member spends most of his time on quoting from a speech made in 1947, he must be pretty bankrupt for arguments. I suggest that he brings himself up to date, Mr. Chairman, and in order to bring him up to date I want to refer him to the Postmaster-General’s report for this year which says—

I want to come back to two very important speeches made yesterday by the hon. member for Ventersdorp (Mr. Greyling) and the hon. member for Brakpan (Mr. Bezuidenhout). The hon. member for Ventersdorp said that the present Coloured, Indian and Bantu workers who were doing work formerly done by White people in the Department of Posts and Telegraphs were on a temporary basis. The position is this in Durban—and I speak with knowledge of my own area—that ever since 1948 Coloured, Indian or Bantu boys have been delivering the telegrams. For the last ten years in Pinetown we have had Bantu or Indian postmen delivering the mail. Will the Minister confirm that these people are on a temporary basis? The hon. member for Brakpan said his solution was to employ matriculated youths to deliver the mail for a couple of hours per day for pocket money. Does the Minister confirm that? Is the permanent pattern for the future to be that all the Coloured, Indian and Bantu, who are to-day doing work formerly done by Whites, are to be regarded as temporary employees only? Is the Government so fearful of the future that they see no permanent advancement for the White citizens of South Africa and that they say to those citizens: “No matter what happens one day you will get your job of delivering the mail back”? I thought we were going to try to raise the standard of living of all our citizens! If that is the basis of thinking of the Government side it is not surprising that the Post Office is in the mess in which it is to-day. There is chaos in the Post Office to-day and it is not due to the staff. You cannot expect an efficient service if there is a staff shortage and if the staff which is there have to work overtime. There were over 10,000 resignations in the past year. How can you expect efficiency in those circumstances? How can you expect an efficient service when many of the staff have to work overtime? In such circumstances a state of affairs must arise which militates against an efficient service. No business can be run on that basis. No business could be profitable and efficient if it had the turnover of staff which obtains in the Post Office to-dav. It is not surprising, Sir, that we find that, in various statutes, where the time limit is fixed for sending notices by post, that time limit is being extended. In the case of many of our Statutes where the time limit had been fixed at ten days, for instance, amendments are now introduced extending that time to 14 days or 21 days. That is being done for no other reason but that the commercial community have lost confidence in the efficiency of the delivery service of the Post Office. It takes longer to-day to send a letter from one centre to another than it did four or five years ago. That position has come about as a result of the policy of the Minister in that, whereas a year or two ago, the Minister had the staff but no equipment, to-day he has the money. the equipment to a certain extent, but no staff. I think the hon. the Minister should adoot a more aggressive attitude towards the Minister of Finance to get the necessary funds for the equipment. He should also adopt a more aggressive attitude towards his fellow Cabinet members to see that he gets the wherewithal to improve the conditions of service of his staff so that he can get his fair share of the staff that is offering.

In my own constituency the local Chamber of Commerce is appalled at the conditions which obtain in the post office. Here I have a cutting from a local newspaper which comes out weekly in which the telephone service in Durban is criticized. It says—

Conditions in the Pinetown post office are crowded and uncomfortable. No Department of Labour inspector, doing his job, will pass the present Pinetown post office as far as ordinary working conditions are concerned under the Factories Act. I would say that those conditions are unhealthy in summer.

As far as the telephone service is concerned, I know of cases in Pinetown where firms have come to Pinetown to start businesses but have gone back to Durban because they could not get telephones. I am not complaining about the Postmaster-General. Whenever I have had occasion to approach him I have found him sympathetic and helpful. He has gone out of his way. Sir, I would not have his job for ten times his present salary. He is completely frustrated and bogged down by lack of planning and lack of policy on the part of the Government of the day. To try to bolster up a debate by advancing the arguments the previous speaker has, arguments based on speeches made in 1947, does not get us anywhere. It only shows how bankrupt the Government is if, over a period of 18 years, they can only quote what the position was in 1947. We have had tremendous development in postal services throughout the whole world over the last 18 years. There have been developments in electronics, postal techniques, letter sorting and so on. Time after time when officials demand additional money they are pushed on one side. They must be the most frustrated of all public servants. [Time limit.]

The hon. member for Orange Grove (Mr. E. G. Malan) read out a long list of names of towns yesterday and contended that no buildings had been erected there and that nothing had been done there. I have a few figures which I should like to discuss with him: In 1962-3 no fewer than 20 new post offices were built; in 1963-4 a further 20 were built and in 1964-5, 22 were built. Only three of these were bought.

Where?

A post office was built in my own town.

How big is South Africa?

I think that 62 buildings over a period of three years is an achievement which has not been equalled. In any case, it is an achievement of which hon. members opposite could not boast when they were in power. My hon. friend here spoke about 1947. I think that this must be very painful for the Opposition. It must be painful for them in this respect that we have to go back to people at present working in the Post Office and who were not even born when the United Party last had any say in this regard. I think that that is probably the most painful jab the Opposition could be given.

I want to come back to the hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Durrant). Provision is now being made for an amount of R340,000 for the setting up of transmitters for broadcasts to the outside world. The hon. member for Turffontein expressed a number of doubts in regard to the control, the contents and the policy in respect of this service. I should like to give the hon. member the following facts: Firstly, that this amount of R340,000 is being made available to the S.A.B.C. for the erection of those transmitters. Secondly, that the S.A.B.C., as an independent body which lays down its policy itself, will be responsible for those transmissions. The content of those broadcasts will be directed positively at the outside world. It will not be negative propaganda because it is of no avail to try to refute propaganda with propaganda. The S.A.B.C. will give a positive picture of South Africa as a civilized country and this will have to serve to counter what the outside world already knows because of what hon. members opposite have from time to time said in this House for the benefit of the outside world. We shall make the outside world acquainted in a positive way with the fact that we are not, for example, a police state; that we are not, for example, still living in the dark ages. I think now of what has been said by that side over the period of 13 years during which I have been a member of this House in regard to what this side of the House and South Africa is. That service will tell the world that we are not a police state, that we are not living in the dark ages, that there is no slavery here and that one can worship God here in South Africa.

[Inaudible.]

Hon. members have said that one cannot worship God freely in this country any more.

I said nothing.

The hon. member is very sensitive. It will give a positive picture of South Africa.

May I ask a question?

No. We shall give the world a positive picture of the fact that we in South Africa are a civilized and highly-developed nation. That will be our image. I leave it with confidence to the S.A.B.C. to fulfil that task. This amount of R340,000 which is being made available is nothing out of the ordinary. The B.B.C. in Britain obtained an amount of R 16,000,000 for its foreign services from the State last year. I welcome this new direction. We should have had it a long time ago; we should long ago have had a medium by means of which we could give the outside world a true picture of South Africa. Mr. Chairman, you will agree with me that the radio is a mighty weapon in one’s hands in order to give the outside world a picture of one’s country, a picture of our economic might, our country’s inherent cultural force, its composition in the cultural sphere, our country’s policy. I should not blame the S.A.B.C. at all if they were, for example, to tell the outside world that every race group in this country receives what is its due, and that it receives this as far as possible. I should not regard that as being propaganda. Nor would I blame the S.A.B.C. if it were to say that the race groups in our country are living in peace and in orderly communities which are unequalled and incomparable with the rest of the world. We are able to say this to the world; we are able to draw the curtain a little for the rest of the world and to tell them how our State is governed here—that it is governed on the principles on which a true democracy is based. It would be a wonderful comparison but I do not think that we should draw a comparison between ourselves and what is, for example, going on elsewhere in the Black states in Africa. No, the S.A.B.C. must tell the world in a positive way what we are, what our State is like, what the foundations are on which our State rests, about the orderly community here, about the obedience to law here in this country where law and order prevails. I shall welcome it if this is done. If an amount of R340.000 is made available for this purpose, I say that it is only a drop in the ocean and certainly does not merit the tirade delivered by the hon. member for Turffontein. This project has already been delayed and it does not behove the hon. member to make such a fuss about it and to try to stir up suspicion and a lack of confidence by dragging the hon. the Minister into the matter and saying that this and that will happen. It does not behove us to act in this way. I want us to speak with one voice in regard to this matter. Let us differ from one another here but let us speak with one voice in regard to this foreign broadcast service. The Opposition are always telling us that they are just as anxious as we are for the world to be given a true and correct picture of South Africa as a Western State, as a Christian State and as a democratic State. I accept their assurance that this is what they want. My appeal to them is that we should all speak with one voice in respect of this foreign service and that we should give the world a true picture of our country.

I am sure the hon. member will excuse me if I do not go with him on his world survey. I want to deal with matters here in South Africa, matters which are more important to our local public at the moment. The hon. member in the course of his remarks did mention that 60 new post offices have been built in three years, at the rate of 20 per year. I would like to remind him, Sir, that there are plus/minus 1,600 post offices in this country and that at this rate of progress the newest post office being built to-day will be 80 years old before the last of the back-log is caught up with.

Are they all obsolete?

Those sort of figures just do not mean a thing.

I want to deal under the Minister’s policy with the question of the inadequacy of the postal services they are giving to the public. The hon. Minister earlier this morning gave some information with regard to the replacement of the existing post office at Simonstown, probably one of the most hard-worked and overworked in the Cape area at the moment. I just want to put him in touch with a few facts, and let me say in doing so I want to cast no reflection at all upon the work of the staff or the officials of the post office. Those men in the post office at Simonstown are being killed on their feet by lack of sympathetic treatment from the Minister and his Government. They cannot do enough to help you, they do everything they can to help, and so do the higher officials when you approach them, but they are handcuffed and throttled by the state machine which will not give them the facilities to be able to do their own job properly. As the Committee knows, Simonstown has been developed as the Republic’s premier and only naval base. It has meant a vast change with regard to the responsibilities and the volume of work in the post office. Hundreds of families have moved in from all over South Africa. They have their own home ties in the Republic and require connections with those homes through the services of the post office. Representations have been made to my knowledge for a number of years to try and anticipate this growing demand. The hon. Minister mentioned in his earlier reply the extensions and certain modifications Which have been carried out. That has been done after severe pressure and these alterations meet to a certain extent, or rather did meet some of the disabilities, but they are still completely inadequate. The public portion of the post office at Simonstown to my mind is a disgrace to anybody, it would be a disgrace to the smallest private business concern, let alone a Government State Department. As far as the ordinary activities in the area are concerned, and I am not now referring to seasonal pressure, I myself checked the position recently, when there was no holiday traffic to boost up pressure, merely the normal needs of the local community; I tested them out twice; on one occasion it took 28 minutes and in the other case 32 minutes to reach the counter. The men on the counter there are not the type of specialist such as they have in the bigger post offices, where each deals with a particular section of the post office work. They have got to deal with every bit of the multitude of work in a post office. I have seen young men in the Simonstown post office, both young and well-matured men, wasted away to shadows by the volume of work they are called upon to cope with, completely over-worked, but there is very little practical appreciation of the work they are doing. If the staff-room at the Simonstown post office were provided by an ordinary commercial firm, I take it they would probably be prosecuted for not providing adequate facilities as required by law for their staff, to give them the adequate comfort and convenience specially required by people working under exceptional pressure. In the public part of the post office you have queues there on an average of anything from ten to 20 people, many of them elderly people, many of them young married women who have to take their babies with them. There is not a seat provided for them to sit, they have to stand perhaps 30 minutes. There is not enough room in the post office for a queue. In bad weather such as we get occasionally, the queues extend right out onto the public pavement, in the rain. They either wait or they go home without service. That is the sort of thing that is going on. A couple of stamp machines down there would solve a tremendous lot of the problems, because one person out of every three in the queue wants to buy a couple of stamps. They are held up for ten or 15 minutes while the chap at the counter is dealing with something which takes a lot of his time, dealing with one individual, while the queue waits. A couple of stamp machines would take away part of the queue and a number of people could be served. There are lots of other improvements possible whilst waiting for the new post office.

The other point I want to make is with regard to the new post office. The hon. Minister mentioned that certain steps have been taken in regard to putting the new post office on the works programme. Is the hon. Minister aware that the contractors on the new road-widening scheme are actually busy working within 100 yards of the Minister’s post office and that if something is not done very quickly, it will be left sticking out like a sore thumb into the new main road through Simonstown. By what I know of the programme part of the work, we will probably find next year in the Estimates a token figure of R50 for initial surveys and that kind of thing, and that it is a four or five-year job. The provision of any adequate post office at Simonstown cannot wait that time.

There has been a complete change in the volume of duties brought about by the development of our own naval station. Surely even for the sake of departmental prestige alone the Post Office should at least be able to give them the service they require, but such is not the case. The hon. Minister knows full well the vast volume of work which is being thrust onto the Post Office, work quite extraneous to what may be considered normal postal duties, but which to-day are part of their duties. Sir, we have experience in the House, and it is no discredit to the Public Works people themselves, because they are also overloaded, but we had experience of the time they have to take because they cannot cope with these matters. Is it not long past the time when the Minister and his administration should take more assistance from private enterprise, from private firms of architects to draw up the designs, and contractors to do the building work, in order to get on with the job instead of putting it on the Estimates and then sitting back for another four or five years? I would suggest that the hon. Minister might have a look at that aspect, and take some of the load off the shoulders of the Public Works Department. He might apply some of the drive that is necessary to the postal department. I know that the hon. Minister himself is most sympathetic, the department is sympathetic. The public get heaps of sympathy, but what they want is practical service allied to this sympathy. The service they are getting from the local fellows on the job and those who are above them, is good, but they are completely circumscribed by the facilities that they have available to work with. I know one of the replies is that there is a shortage of staff. Sir, can one imagine anything else but a shortage of staff in a department which cares so little for its staff? I had a case only recently of an individual in this Peninsula who had made the Post Office his career. He came to ask me for a reference to apply for a job in another government department. I said to him: What on earth are you leaving the Post Office for with all your service? He had attained quite a decent position. His reply was plain and simple: “Mr. Gay, as far as the Post Office is concerned, it is hopeless for the staff to expect any decent treatment under the present system”. He said “I have given up in despair, I have tried long enough, but there is another government department opening up where the prospects are better, and despite all the loss of service that I may suffer, I am prepared to change”. He is a highly educated man, the type of man the Post Office cannot afford to lose. That is the type of spirit that is sapping the vitality of the Post Office. I received a letter the other day from one of the outlying areas on the Reef. It was a surface mail letter and it took 19 days from the date stamped on the letter until delivered at Simonstwon. Nineteen days I would imagine it must have come down by runner. It seems to me that surface mail to-day is a thing that does not count. Air-mail letters have on occasion taken five days from the Reef. That is not the sort of service we expect from the Post Office and it is not the service the Post Office used to take pride in.

I should like to ask the hon. Minister in connection with the Post Office at Simonstown and the road-widening scheme, what is going on? The hon. Minister knows of the representations that have been made. I would ask him not to allow the Post Office to become one of the major bottle-necks in that road scheme, which has to go on not only for the convenience of the public but also for the sake of security. All your Defence heavy traffic between the two dockyards have to traverse that road, and with the heavy road transport that has developed to-day, they urgently need the new main road. [Time limit.]

I should like very briefly to make two requests of the hon. the Minister. There is a model Coloured township at Graaff-Reinet called Kroonvale. That township has modern schools, a communal hall and so forth, but one thing is missing and that is a Post Office. The people in that township number something in excess of 3,000 at the moment. The township is expanding fairly quickly and we take it that the number of inhabitants will double within the foreseeable future. I think that position justifies Kroonvale having its own Post Office. We also want a Post Office there to undertake the disbursement of pensions to the Coloured people because, when pensions are paid out, there is a great crowd at the Post Office at Graaff-Reinet and this fact causes inconvenience to a great many people. If this crowding at Graaff-Reinet can be avoided and the pensions can be paid out at a Post Office at Kroonvale, it will help a great deal. The tragedy is that there is a street called Parliament Street between the Post Office and the hotel on the other side of the street, and Parliament Street is sometimes so blocked that the traffic cannot move. We shall therefore be very grateful if the hon. the Minister will give very serious consideration to giving Kroonvale its own Post Office at which pensions can be paid out. My second request is this: I want to ask that where a farmer applies to-day for a private telephone, to build it himself, from his home to the house of his farm manager or to the house of one of his employees or to a neighbouring farm, he should be given the right to erect this private telephone line himself. The farmers could do this previously. There are still farmers in my constituency to-day who have these private telephones but farmers are no longer permitted to build their own private telephone lines. If this were permitted it would mean a great saving to the farmer because at the moment each time he wants to contact his manager on another farm or on his own farm he has to use his motor-car, whereas he could otherwise just pick up his telephone. These are telephones which are not connected to an exchange but are used exclusively for private purposes. We should like the hon. the Minister to give his attention to this matter to see whether that right cannot again be given to the farmers.

Last year, I raised the question of the postal deliveries in the Republic and particularly in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg where we were finding that letters were being delivered as late as 8 and 9 o’clock in the evening. The hon. Minister did not have an opportunity to reply to me in the House, but he was good enough to write me a letter subsequently wherein he said—

What has happened since this optimistic prediction of the hon. Minister last year? Instead of getting one delivery a day, for which in retrospect we are now grateful, in some areas there is only a delivery once every second day. Mr. Chairman, last year, I had occasion to say in this debate, after the hon. Minister had spoken, “I am sorry to have to bring the House down to earth again after the address by the hon. the Minister in which he painted a glowing picture to us of things to come. We are grateful for the promises in regard to things to come, but unfortunately we are living in the present and we have a few problems which require to be solved now”. This, Mr. Chairman, is still the position. It seems to us that the hon. the Minister is living in a dream world. He keeps on telling us about things that are going to happen, but in the meantime there is no alleviation of the situation.

I want to examine the telephone service in particular. Ever since the war, it has been impossible in the Republic of South Africa, or the Union of South Africa as it then was, to obtain a telephone with ease in every area of South Africa. When there was an excess demand in an area, new facilities were provided and you were able to get a telephone, but it was a sort of stop-gap procedure all along the line, and at no time has the public in South Africa been able to go to any Post Office in this country and say: “I would like a telephone”, and be told “you can have one”. In one area or another there has always been a constant shortage of telephones. The hon. member for Bethlehem (I am sorry he is not in the House at the moment) complained yesterday that in 1953, that is five years after the Nationalist Party had taken over, there was a shortage of 82,000 telephones, and he blamed this on the United Party. Unfortunately the hon. member did not go back quite far enough, because in 1947, that is only two years after the war, it is true there was a shortage of 60,000 telephones, but in 1950, three years after the Nationalist Government had come into power, there was no longer a shortage of 60,000 telephones but a shortage of 109,000 telephones. So in the first three years of this Government’s regime, the shortage in telephones increased by 49,000. If you look at the picture over the years, you will find that in every single year (I checked back to 1947) there has been a shortage of telephones, as I say: 109,000 in 1950; 82,000 in 1954; 65,000 in 1955; 71,000 in 1956; 58,000 in 1957; then we start getting a decrease, it is true; 28,000 in 1959; 18,000 in 1960; 14,000 in 1961, then a drop to 11,000 in 1962; 11,000 in 1963 and this year up again to 14,000. The hon. member for Brakpan (Mr. Bezuidenhout) claims that our problem to-day is that we are going through a period of crisis, and hon. members on the other side have told us that with this unprecedented expansion in industry and commerce, it is obviously quite impossible for the Post Office to meet the demand.

You know that that is so.

I know, but my complaint is that this position has existed ever since 1947 at least, and during that period we have had booms, we have had recessions, we have had good times, we have had bad times, we have had an excess supply of capital, we have had a lack of capital, we have had every single possible condition that one can have in a country. And still no telephones! It is no good blaming this on this unprecedented expansion in industry and commerce. The basic fact is that there is something rotten in the State of Denmark, and the whole system under which we are working, under which the Post Office is working, and with its relationship with the fiscus, it is just physically impossible for the good people of the Post Office to do the job. It is true that they have a shortage of staff at the moment, but they have excellent, trained personnel, they have technicians equal to those of any organization in the country, and if capital funds were made available to them, they would have prevented this shortage of telephones. They could have caught up in the time when we did not have a crisis and we did not have this unprecedented expansion. But what makes the situation worse, is that the only profit-earning section of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs is the telephones. In the last four years, the telephone section of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs has earned R11,000,000, R13,000,000, R13,000,000 and R13,500,000 respectively. Where do these profits come from? Only from the telephones. The postal services lose money. Last year their income was R27,000,000 and their expenditure R28,000,000 before providing for depreciation, interest and all sorts of other things. The income of Telegraphs was R8,700,000 and its expenditure R6,700.000, but if you take the additional debits that have got to be made, you will probably find that there was no profit there at all. The profit is in the telephones. Is it not time therefore that the Government or the Minister decided to be businessmen and to understand that the more telephones they install, the more profit there will be for the Post Office, that to take the capital that the Government has available and put it into profit-earning ventures, like telephones, and to forget a little perhaps about other things, such as some of the facets of community development, would be to the benefit of the country? Here is one of the few ventures in which the Government plays a part which can show an adequate return on capital investment, and the hon. Minister just does not seem to be able to persuade his colleagues to provide the Post Office and its services with the money that is required. There is profit in this for the Post Office and a lot of profit for the taxpayer. Because if the telephones were readily available, you would find a greater usage. There are a number of adverse factors to-day: There are for instance 23,000 sharing telephones. This should not be the case. If you put a trunk-call through from Johannesburg to Cape Town to-day, it can take anything from two to three hours, and heaven forbid if you want to cancel that trunk-call, because you can spend an hour trying to dial through to trunk-call enquiries to ask them to cancel the call. You find it is just physically impossible to reach them. The hon. Minister must now stop telling us about what he is going to do in the future, because he does not appear to realize that as one goes into the future greater demands arise, and what he is providing for to-day will be obsolete to-morrow, or will be insufficient tomorrow for the demands that are going to be made on him. The hon. member for Pinetown (Mr. Hopewell) interjected a moment ago that this is a Government of planning. “Can the hon. Minister get up and tell us that the Post Office has planned”. I am prepared to accept that the Post Office has planned, but not that the Post Office has planned and that the Minister has made the necessary financial arrangements with the Treasury so that in, two, three or four or five years time, there will be no shortages of telephones in this country, and that anyone who wants a telephone will be able to get one. That would be planning. [Time limit.]

We have had to listen to the tirades of the Opposition since yesterday afternoon. It started with their main speaker, the hon. member for Orange Grove (Mr. E. G. Malan). Mr. Chairman, I have had the privilege of sitting here for a number of years and listening to speeches and criticism but I have never before heard a speech such as that made by the hon. member for Orange Grove yesterday afternoon. His whole motive, of course, was to play the hon. the Minister off against the Postmasters-General and he did so in every possible and impossible way. I do not think it behoves any hon. member to do something of this nature.

Are you going to fight for the Post Office workers?

We shall have to tolerate the hon. member for Drakensburg (Mrs. S. M. van Niekerk). If she has to remain silent in this House she will die. I do not think it behoves an hon. member in this House to make such efforts to play off the head of a Department against his Minister and to make the fuss which the hon. member for Orange Grove made yesterday. He mentioned a shortage of staff, he spoke of maladministration and he had fault to find with everything. I just want to say that I frankly admit that there is a shortage of staff but one finds this in every department.

Use Coloureds.

One finds the same position throughout the world. It is easy to say these things when one has no responsibility. The hon. member wandered all over the place; he has a “wanderlust” and he sometimes does not know where he is going and what he is trying to say. I want to tell him that we have very little respect for that kind of speech and that we attach very little value to it. The hon. member tried to quote statistics to show how bad the position is and how much better the position was under the United Party. What he said is untrue. It simply shows that he knows nothing of the conditions which prevailed at the time. I want to confine myself to my own constituency and to the conditions which I know, not which I have read about in numerous newspaper cuttings. The big mistake made by the hon. member is that he is not doing his work in his own constituency. We who know where the road leads can very quickly see what a man is doing in his constituency and whether he is doing what is necessary. That is my summing up of the hon. member. I just want to give the hon. the Minister and the Postmaster-General and his staff the assurance that this Government is their true and sincere friend in all respects. A position has developed in the country which is similar to conditions elsewhere in the world. But we shall overcome this inconvenience and times will be normal again and we shall be able to manage our affairs in the proper way. We know that the United Party are trying to undermine us but they are political outcasts and make no progress; they are beaten at election after election.

Are you going to be nominated again?

I have never been afraid of that sort of thing. I want to tell that hon. member that his party has raised its flag in my constituency. Some of the most ardent United Party supporters in the country live there, but they use their common sense. If they were to sit in the public gallery and listen to what the hon. member had to say they would be ashamed.

Before I resume my seat I should like to express my thanks to the hon. the Minister and the Postmaster-General for what they have done for us in Lichtenberg over the past two years, for extending the Post Office facilities there and at Ottosdal and also for the F.M. station they will erect there. The public appreciate these services and I want to ask the hon. the Minister and his officials not to pay very much attention to what has been said by the Opposition.

I am very surprised to hear that the hon. member for Lichtenburg (Mr. M. C. van Niekerk) is perfectly satisfied with the postal services, seeing that there is an outcry from one end of the country to the other. I should like him to go back and tell his constituents that he is perfectly satisfied with all the postal and telephone services and that they are not paying nearly enough for the services they enjoy. The public is being asked to pay much more to-day for these services than they have ever been asked to pay in the past, for services which have never been so bad. I am not blaming the staff. We on this side say that the staff are not being adequately paid, but hon. members opposite say they are adequately paid. We say their conditions are not satisfactory. We have pointed that out over and over, especially in the country towns and villages where the exchanges leave much to be desired. Two speakers on this side have said this mom-ning that the local exchanges in their areas would not be passed by any inspector under the Factories Act, but because they belong to the Government they go on operating, and that is quite satisfactory to this Minister. I think it is time, if the Minister hopes to keep any staff at all, that he has to take into consideration the conditions under which the staff works and all the overtime they have to put in. Last year we put up the facts in regard to the country exchanges in particular. I dealt with a specific complaint sent in by organizations. The Minister admitted that there were difficulties and he said he would get into touch with the people concerned, and I got a letter from the Department. I have no complaint in regard to the senior officials in my area. The divisional controller in my area gives me all the help he can, but what does he say? He says that the equipment in most of the country exchanges is almost worn out and needs completely replacing; it takes a long time to repair some of it and they do not have the necessary equipment to keep it in order. Then there is the question of staffing, especially during the night. You cannot have women doing it, because in the country villages it is not safe for women to be alone in the exchanges at night. You cannot get men, and when you try to transfer married men to the small towns where there are no houses available—we know there are housing difficulties in the cities but there are severe housing shortages in the small towns to-day— they are unwilling to go because they say they cannot keep two homes going on their meagre salaries. We suggest that at least local allowances should be paid to those people until such time as they can get a house or the Department provides a house for its staff so that those who are transferred can at least be provided with a house. To-day even in the smaller towns no person can get accommodation at the hotels other than bed and breakfast and there are very few boarding establishments which will house the staff at a low rate. It is out of the question for these people to maintain their homes in the towns while they spend several months in the country exchanges pending permanent staff going there. We have suggested that local allowances should be paid to those people, but the Minister has refused.

In my own area we have a big sugar mill going up costing about R13,500,000. We have a wattle mill, which for half the year will process wattle and for the other half of the year will process sugar, and they are spending another R2,500,000, and that area will have a tremendous need for further telephone services and postal services. The new people who come in to grow sugar already have difficulties in getting telephones. They are told that new lines cannot be built because that can only be done if special permission is obtained from Pretoria. Here is a big new industrial venture and a very important one to the country, and telephones must be supplied, and it can only be supplied by the Government. I think there has to be new thinking on this question. It will be quite impossible for people to produce cane in big quantities without telephones connecting them with the mill to arrange for deliveries and to obtain their supplies. Big farms which before were not under cultivation are now being cut up into smaller farms to grow sugar and that means that there will be more homesteads and it is imperative that these people should be connected up by telephone as soon as possible, otherwise there will be tremendous losses suffered by the people concerned and it will create difficulties for the millers, too. I appeal to the Minister to see to it that some of the profits are ploughed back into new equipment and to giving the staff, especially at these exchanges, some allowance if the Government is going to be adamant in refusing to improve the salaries and improving conditions. They must staff the country exchanges otherwise there will be a complete breakdown in those services. [Time limit.]

I should like to address a personal request to the Minister, a request which has been submitted in writing several of a new post office at Zeerust. The present post office is a very old building which is not worthy of Zeerust and does not do the Department of Posts any credit. It is situated next to an Indian dwelling. The front door of the post office and that of the Indian dwelling are next to each other. A new site for a post office in Zeerust was acquired several years ago. The telephone exchange for the new post office has been erected on the new site and it is ready to be connected up with a new building. Repeated requests in connection with the building of a new post office have been submitted to the Department for 20 years or more now. These requests have been reacted upon from time to time and the old post office has been renovated a little, but remains inadequate. The public of Zeerust and of Marico feel that they are still being treated shabbily; they want a new post office erected on the site which has been set aside for the purpose. I want to repeat my plea to-day. I want to submit it to the Minister, as I have already done in letters to him and to the Postmaster-General as well. Zeerust will be 100 years old in 1967, and that memorable occasion will be celebrated by way of a festival. The public of Zeerust is hoping that the new post office will be inaugurated during those celebrations. I trust that it will be possible for the Minister and the Postmaster-General to use their influence with the Department of Public Works so as to ensure that the post office will be completed by that time. It would be appreciated by the public of Zeerust and the voters of the Marico district.

Then I should like to express my personal thanks to the Postmaster-General. I do not know how long he will still be in the service, but the services he has rendered to me and to the public in my constituency could not be improved upon. He has always given sympathetic consideration to requests submitted to his Department and to him personally by me and other parties in connection with matters which could sometimes even have been regarded as trifling, and those requests always received immediate attention. The extension of the life of some small postal agencies is deserving of mention. Many of those agencies no longer deserved to continue in existence, because they had become unprofitable, but because closing them down could have caused inconvenience, particularly for pensioners and aged persons living near those agencies, the Postmaster-General time and again adopted a sympathetic attitude and many of the agencies were continued in spite of the fact that that entailed losses being suffered by the Department of Posts. I want to thank the Postmaster-General for that. In general I have nothing but praise for the services rendered by the Department of Posts. I think the criticism which is repeatedly being expressed from the other side is only intended to place the Minister and his Department in an unfavourable light. If we just open our eyes to the services which are being rendered in spite of the large shortage of manpower, we can have nothing but praise for the efficient way in which the Department of Posts has carried out its duties. [Time limit.]

I wish I could share the sentiments of the hon. member for Marico (Mr. Grobler) about the wonderful postal services we are getting, hut I am afraid I cannot. It may be that these services are satisfactory in the country districts, but in the large cities the position is disgraceful at present. This is an essential service we are talking about and not a luxury, and I think it is disgraceful that it should take as long as five or six days for a letter posted in Johannesburg to reach another suburb in the same city. The postal deliveries in some suburbs have been reduced to two or three times a week. Particularly in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg the postal deliveries are now reduced to two or three times a week instead of twice a day, as it used to be.

It is worse in America.

I am not particularly interested in that, but I want to tell the hon. member that there is not a patriotic American whom I met in the States who did not talk disparagingly of the postal services there; they did not try to defend those services. They agreed that it was absolutely wrong that in a huge country like America one of the essential services should be so badly run. They compare the postal services in America disparagingly with the postal services in Britain, where they are particularly good. You can post a letter in London in the morning and you can have it received somewhere in the rest of England by lunch-time the same day. There is the most remarkable efficiency in the British postal services, and I think we should try to aim at equating our services with those of the most efficient countries, and not with the inefficient countries. If the Minister would only get away from ideology and fill the vacancies, particularly for postmen, with non-Whites, our troubles would be over, but they will insist on taking the line of employing civilized labour; the old policy which was applied in .times of unemployment to try to take up the slack of White unemployment, in the 1920s is now being applied in a time of full employment, when there are many more jobs than can be filled by workers among the Whites. It is ludicrous not to fill these posts with non-Whites who could quite easily take over postal deliveries and similar work. Then the problem would be solved almost over-night. If we could get away from ideology and back to practical considerations in reagrd to labour, we would not have the ludicrous situation where we have postal deliveries in some of the suburbs in Johannesburg twice a week now.

Of course, what applies to bad postal services in America does not apply to telegrams. There that service is remarkably efficient, but it happens to be in the hands of private enterprise and not of the State, and the long distance telephone services in America are remarkably efficient. I want to ask the Minister to take a leaf out of the book of America as far as efficient telephone services are concerned, and instead of charging double rates for Sundays charge half-rates, as is done in America and in Britain. That is a sensible idea, because instead of trying to concentrate all the long-distance calls for commercial purposes and for private purposes during the business week, the Minister should attempt to encourage people whose calls are not urgent to use the telephone on Sunday at half-price. He will then find that there will be a much better spread of the long-distance services. Whether or not he will have to pay overtime to his employees does not interest me, but the public will get a better service and I think even economically, from his point of view, he will find that he will get a much better spread of the use of his long-distance services. This is done in Britain and in America, where the long-distance telephone is used on Sundays and during week-ends after business hours, after 8 at night and after lunch-time on Saturdays until Monday morning, at half-rates, and not at double rates as we are charged in South Africa. I put that out as a constructive suggestion to relieve the congestion on the long-distance lines and I hope the Minister will give serious consideration to it.

I must agree with other hon. members who discussed the raising of the price of telephone calls from public call-boxes to 5 cents. I really think it is a great shame. It is a doubling of the cost, a 100 per cent increase in what is an essential service. A great number of these calls are emergency calls and essential calls.

An What about the maintenance costs of these booths?

Yes, but unfortunately we are taxing the least affluent section of the community and we are asking them to pay more for essential services. I realise that the costs are high but that cannot be helped. It is an essential service particularly for the poorer people, White and non-White, because it is they who cannot afford to rent a telephone and have to rely on public call-boxes. I think it is a shame that these people are now asked to pay double the cost. This may apply more particularly to non-Whites, especially in the vast Bantu townships like Soweto in Johannesburg, where half a million people live and there are very few private telephones, because people cannot afford them. I suppose the same applies to Lenasia and to the Coloured townships throughout the country, and there are few enough public telephone boxes in those townships. For those people now to pay 5 cents is unfair. It is an unfair tax on a section of the community which is least able to afford it.

The hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman) has, just as did the whole of the Opposition, taken exceptional cases and made them out to be the rule. The cases which the hon. member mentioned in connection with the postal service were certainly exceptional ones but she made them out to be the rule. The official inquiry instituted by the Post Office itself states that delays vary from day to day in Johannesburg but the general delay as a result of the shortage of manpower is between 12 and 24 hours. The hon. member spoke of five days. This is a typical example of the actions of hon. members opposite—to take the exception and to exaggerate it as being the general rule. [Interjections.] I want to add that there are certain other parts where things are difficult. We admit that there is a problem. The hon. member for Houghton made a good impression upon me initially with her plea for better postal services and telephone services, but then I realized that in her case, as in the case of a scorpion, there was a sting in the tail because her solution to the problem was to abolish the Colour bar find to appoint non-Whites. I immediately lost my respect for her argument because what is going to happen once the manpower shortage problem is solved? The White man will already have been forced out and will not be able to return. Where is he to obtain work? The policy of the Government is to give attention to the interests of the White worker and then to those of the others.

I want to mention a further argument—the shortage of staff in the Post Office. There are shortages but I just want to say that the Post Office is not at the moment saddled with as great a shortage as is the Public Service, although the shortage of staff in the Post Office is felt immediately by the public. In the Public Service a letter does not have to be replied to immediately. It can wait for a few days, but when one hands in a telegram one expects it to be delivered within an hour; if one books a telephone call, one wants to make that call, and if a letter is posted, one wants it to be delivered as soon as possible. That is why the manpower shortage in the Post Office is more noticeable than in other spheres and once again this shortage is magnified as a result of the necessary services which the Post Office renders. The staff are doing their best and we want to pay the highest tribute to those men and women who are doing everything they can to render these services under difficult conditions. We realize that our contry’s prosperity depends upon a good post and telegraph system. As long as this exists, things will go well with us and that is why we want to pay tribute to the Post Office staff who are continuing with this task.

I should like to say a few words in regard to the increase in the minimum tariff, a matter which was raised by the hon. member for Houghton. What are the true facts. Sir? I accept the fact that the public of South Africa are responsible enough to accept the necessity for the increase in the tariff if they have the full facts. These are the facts: There has been a tremendous expansion of direct trunk-line dialling from one town or area to another. It is also being extended to the public telephone service at the moment. One will therefore shortly also be able to dial directly from a public telephone when one wants to put through a trunk call instead of operating through the exchange. Certain equipment is necessary to enable this to be done from the public call-boxes, equipment to control the number of calls and the time taken by each, and the installing of the equipment alone in each call-box costs R14. There are 13,500 public call-boxes in the Republic and when one multiplies 13,500 by R14 one can immediately see the additional expense involved. I want to emphasize a few other matters in this connection. This is the first expense. Is the hon. member aware of the fact—I am convinced that the public are not aware of it—that this tariff of 2¾ cents has remained unchanged for 60 years although everything else has increased in price? The tariff was fixed at 2¾ cents 60 years ago and it is now being increased for the first time. Secondly, the call-box user is not a telephone subscriber and therefore does not pay telephone rental. The telephone subscriber assists in meeting the expense of telephone services as such while the non-subscriber has the facility of being able to make his call without paying telephone rental. For this reason the additional 2¾ cents is not an abnormal increase in this case. I want to add that call-box users only pay for calls; they pay nothing towards the maintenance of call-boxes and they make no contribution towards the cost of providing call-boxes, in spite of the fact that these costs are extremely high. I am sure that the hon. member is also aware of the great damage done to call boxes. I come now to the reason why the fee for this service is being increased and not the fee for the ordinary services. This service showed a loss of R360,000 in 1960-61. In spite of this increase from 2¾ cents to 5 cents per call additional revenue of only R150,000 per annum is anticipated; in other words the loss will still amount to R210,000. Sir, I know the public of South Africa and I think that they are sensible and reasonable and responsible enough, if they have these facts before them, to accept the fact that there was no alternative but to increase the tariff. The public of South Africa will accept it and I have sufficient faith in them to believe that they will.

I come now to the question of delay in trunk-calls. In the debate on his policy motion during the past week in the Other Place, the hon. the Minister announced the great plans which he has in mind with the microwave system which is to be introduced for telephone services. He said that within a year or two there would be automatic dialling between Johannesburg and Cape Town, between Johannesburg and Durban and Port Elizabeth and so forth. The microwave system can handle 5,000 calls simultaneously. Sir, we are keeping pace with technical developments as far as we can but hon. members opposite can only criticize and find fault with everything.

Before I resume my seat there is one last point I should like to raise with the hon. the Minister. I do not know whether I can say that I am making this plea on behalf of the rest of the country but I am certainly doing so on behalf of the Rand area. The public on the Rand experience problems in regard to our telephone directory which is drawn up alphabetically. If, for example, one wants to look up the number of a Van der Merwe or a Van der Westhuizen on the Witwatersrand and one does not know the man’s initials, one has to wade through three or four pages, and if one does not know what the man’s initials are, it is virtually impossible to find that person in the directory. There are sometimes 5 or 6 people with the same initials. I should just like to know from the hon. the Minister whether there is a specific reason why the towns appear in the telephone directory in their present jumbled fashion. Can we not revert to the old system in which each town is given separately? One usually knows in which town a man lives although one may not know what his initials are.

I want to conclude with this thought—that we want to pay tribute to the Postmaster-General and his staff for a very attractively drawn up report and a very carefully prepared report this year. I think that hon. members on all sides of the House are satisfied with it.

I agree but do you not think that the year should be indicated on the cover?

Yes, that can perhaps be done later. If the hon. member will look just inside the cover he will see the year given on the inside page. We want to congratulate the Postmaster General and his staff on this wonderful report. I think it is a report of which the Department and we as a Parliament can be particularly proud. I think hon. members opposite must stop criticising just for the sake of criticising. Let them at least say something good about the Post Office now and again.

This debate has been remarkable because for the first time so far in the debates on the various Votes of the various Ministers, we have been going for a number of hours and although the hon. member for Randfontein (Dr. Mulder) has commended the colour and the design of the report of the Postmaster-General and although nice things have been said about the forbearance of the staff of the Post Office because of the difficulties under which they have to work, there has not been, with one exception, a single word of thanks to the Minister. That is a strange circumstance in this House as far as Government members are concerned.

We leave it to you to thank the Minister.

There was one exception and that was the hon. member for Lichtenburg (Mr. M. C. van Niekerk). The hon. member thanked the Minister but he did it only once and for that hon. member that too is a very strange circumstance. Normally he thanks the Ministers a dozen times. But, Sir, what is disturbing about this debate is that there is a measure of agreement between hon. members opposite and ourselves that things are very difficult so far as our postal services are concerned; that there is something in the nature of a “crisis” which was the word used by some members; that there is not adequate service either in telephones or in post office deliveries. But, Sir, we get not the slightest indication from anyone as to when this unsatisfactory state of affairs is going to come to an end or as to what planning there is to remedy it.

/

When the boom comes to an end.

Sir, my hon. friend has just interrupted and said, “when the boom comes to an end”. Sir, what an extraordinary statement.

It will come to an end when we have a new Government.

What an extraordinary state of affairs that your approach to a major Government Department is that things will only come right in that Department when there is a recession in your country. It is an almost unbelievable state of affairs that you look forward to a recession to bring an end to the present unsatisfactory state of affairs, because hon. members opposite visualize that the only time when we can have an adequate postal and telephone service in South Africa is when a recession arises at some time in the future. Sir, we have had our recession; we had a recession for more than two years not so long ago, and yet, as the hon. member for Parktown (Mr. Emdin) pointed out there was no improvement at all in the administration of the hon. the Minister’s Department.

That is nonsense.

There was no improvement because the very conditions about which we are complaining to-day began then.

That is not true.

Sir, we tend perhaps to lose our standards as to what an efficient postal service is like. Sir, I have only one experience of a postal service outside of South Africa and that is in Great Britain about 17 years ago. In the metropolitan area of Lon don, a letter posted to-day will be delivered to-day in any part of the city.

Every single one?

Yes. Any letter posted in London this morning will be delivered in London this afternoon. I speak of the position 17 years ago. Any letter posted anywhere in the British Isles was delivered within 24 hours. As I say this was 17 years ago and things may have improved since then. That was a time immediately after the War when it was generally accepted that the services to the public were at a pretty low ebb. Sir, take my own short experience in the city of Durban. In the days of the United Party Government there were two deliveries a day, one in the morning at about 9 o’clock and one in the afternoon at about 3 o’clock, and there are many places in that city to-day where if you get one delivery a day at 2 o’clock in the afternoon you are fortunate.

Even in West Street.

Yes, even in West Street, as the hon. member reminds me.

But let me get back to my constituency for the moment. Sir, about 18 months ago on the north coast of Zululand things had reached the stage where public meetings were being held in respect of the inadequacy of the postal and telephone services and the conditions, under which the personnel of the Post Office had to work. I approached the Divisional Controller in Pietermaritzburg, who then sent up a deputation consisting of himself and his senior officials. We met the local bodies, the farmers’ associations and so forth and nothing happened. I then approached the Postmaster-General who was good enough to send up a senior planning officer last year, who again met all these bodies throughout the constituency and heard their complaints which, I may say, were very vigorously expressed. We are now in 1965, and far from things having improved at the two main centres of Stanger and Empangeni, I have again received letters during this Session of Parliament from the various farmers’ associations and chambers of commerce concerned complaining of a deterioration in the situation, and latterly I have got to the stage where I am receiving telegrams from these people because the situation has deteriorated even further. Sir, what more can one do than to say to the hon. the Minister that it is high time something was done. One has tried every departmental approach; the departmental officials have done what they can within the limitations under which they have to operate, and it is only the hon. the Minister who can put this matter right.

Turning to the postal services again, I want to give an experience of my own. It takes two days on an average for an airmail letter to come from Natal to the Cape; I think that is quite fair. But I had occasion the other day to take a deputation to see a Minister on a Monday morning. I telephoned through on a Wednesday night to have certain documents sent down to me for the purpose of the meeting of that delegation with the Minister. I thought I would be clever and instruct them to send the documents by express airmail rather than ordinary airmail but, Sir, that was a great error, because whereas ordinary airmail takes two days, the express airmail takes four.

Then it must have been express ordinary mail.

No, express airmail. I may say that that packet which was posted on the Thursday arrived at the Houses of Parliament at midday on the Monday after the deputation had left to go back to Natal.

One swallow does not make a summer.

Sir, the chambers of commerce and the farming community cannot continue to operate under these circumstances. In the one centre I mentioned, Stanger, it frequently takes a quarter of an hour to raise the exchange, and I have the correspondence here before me. To get through to Durban, which is 40 miles away, the delay is anything up to four hours. Sir, I do not know whether the hon. the Minister knows anything about the cane belt. But one of the great difficulties we have in between crushing seasons is the likelihood of fires. The only way in which cane fires can be controlled is through the telephone service. If it takes you a quarter of an hour to raise your exchange, your whole farm may be burnt out in that time with a westerly wind in a drought. There is a most elaborate system amongst the farming community in the cane belt, a system of fire committees for the purpose of controlling cane fires. It is a most efficient system, but the whole of that organization depends on the ability to get through on the telephone within a few minutes. As the hon. member for Pine-town (Mr. Hopewell) has just reminded me radio communication is restricted by the hon. the Minister, so radio cannot be used. The hon. the Minister clamps down very severely on radio communication, so we have to rely entirely on the telephone system which is rapidly breaking down. Sir, one would not mind tolerating these conditions if it were a temporary state of affairs, but events seem to suggest and this debate seems to suggest that this state of affairs will go on indefinitely. What we want to hear from the hon. the Minister and what I believe the country wants to hear from him is how he proposes to put the matter right and when we can expect it to be put right; how it is going to be done and when it is going to be done, apart from stopping the present progress and getting back to a state of recession.

This debate has been characteristic by some very peculiar features, features which over the years one has come to regard as being characteristic of the United Party or members on that side. No one denies that there are difficulties in the Post Office at the moment; no one has ever denied that. But there are specific reasons for those difficulties and specific steps are being taken to avert them. But the difficulties that do exist are not of a general nature. They are exceptions. It just so happens that, as the hon. member for Randfontein (Dr. Mulder) rightly said, hon. members on the other side are always magnifying the odd exception until it is presented as being a general phenomenon throughout the country. Let me just remind you, Sir, of what was said by the last few speakers. The hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman) asked: “And when is this state of affairs going to come to an end?” To that one of the members on this side replied: “When the boom is over.” And do you know what the reaction of the hon. member for Zululand to that was? He said that the position would only improve when there was a depression. Is that not a terrible exaggeration? Here an hon. member comes along and says that the position will improve when the boom is over, in other words, when the position is back to normal, and then the hon. member for Zululand comes along and exaggerates that statement; he magnifies it and says that the position would only improve when there was a recession. Surely that is not fair? I want to compliment the hon. member on the fact that he subsequently adopted a fair attitude in certain parts of his speech. I appreciate that, and everybody appreciates fairness and a dispassionate approach. But that is not the way in which the hon. member began his speech; I referred a moment ago to the way in which he began his speech.

But left us proceed to the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (District) (Capt. Henwood). He came along here with the wild story: “There is an outcry from one end of the country to the other.” Sir, that is not the position. I shall furnish more details in a moment. It is only in certain places and in certain circumstances and in certain cases that difficulties are being experienced. Then I come to the hon. member for Pinetown (Mr. Hopewell), who also wants to fall in with the rest of the hon. members on that side. The hon. member is an esteemed member, for whom we all have respect, but sometimes he also oversteps the mark completely. The hon. member spoke about the “chaos” existing in the country. Sir, surely it is ridiculous to talk about chaos existing in the country? Then we come to the hon. member for Simonstown (Mr. Gay).

The hon. member asked for a new post office in Simonstown, but he is not the only one asking for a new post office, everywhere in South Africa new post office buildings are being asked for. And do you know why many of them are asking for that? They want to have a modern building for the sake of prestige. Whether the existing building is still convenient is beside the point. They want to have a new post office which is modern. I told the hon. member for Simonstown that a committee had been appointed to go into the question of the Simonstown Post Office, and what was the finding of that committee? They found that the post office had to be enlarged in certain respects and that a new post office should eventually be planned. Both those steps are being taken at the moment. The committee did not recommend that a new post office was to be erected at once. They said that the post office had to be enlarged and that a new post office then had to be erected in due course.

But now the hon. member comes along, and do you know what he says in connection with this post office which was enlarged and improved and cleaned only recently? He says that it is in such a poor condition that the Controller of Labour would not even allow people to work in it; he says that the Controller of Labour would condemn that post office. Sir, can one take any notice of the opinion of such a person—not we, but the public outside? It is for that reason that the public does not take any notice of the United Party. The United Party do not come forward with reasonable statements which are well-founded and which have been carefully worked out; they come forward with this type of abuse, and here I am referring to the hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Durrant). We know that hon. member as a person who always comes along here with abuse and exaggerated statements. That was all that his speech consisted of.

What did I say of a personal nature?

Can hon. members on that side really expect the public outside to get increasing respect for the United Party? Or is their respect for the United Party decreasing? I leave it to the hon. members to judge that for themselves. The election results ought to be an indication to them. The fact that they are losing the support of the public to an ever-increasing extent is not due to their having a shortage of leaders, and here I am thinking of the three United Party leaders who were recently deposed from their positions as chairmen of various groups; it is due to the way in which they act and to the policy advocated by them.

But let me proceed to deal with the hon. member for Transkeian Territories (Mr. Hughes). That hon. member also tried to carry on in the same way yesterday. He said that tremendous dissatisfaction existed among postal officials in the Transkei. He said that in the Bantu Affairs Department officials were being given allowances and houses, but that the Post Office was doing nothing for its officials.

Yes.

There the hon. member confirms his statement. What is the true position? The allowance which is being paid is only being paid to officials who have been seconded to the Transkeian Government.

That is what we are complaining about.

All the officials do not get it. Only the officials who have been seconded to the Transkeian Government get it, and the reason for that is the following: If they are not paid these allowances the officials will simply not be prepared to go and work under a foreign Government, particularly a new Government. That is the reason why those people have to be compensated. They axe no longer serving under the Government of their own country; they are serving under a foreign Government. The same was done in the case of the English officials who remained on in Ghana and other African countries after England withdrew from those countries. They also received allowances in those countries. The postal officials have not been seconded to the Transkeian Government; they fall under the Department of Posts of South Africa.

What about the officials who are employed in South West Africa? They get an allowance.

South West Africa has its own Post Office Administration. I am speaking of our Post Office Administration in the Republic now. Sir, once one started paying allowances to officials serving in the Transkei one would set in motion a process which would lead to all the officials on the Rand and in every place in South Africa demanding allowances. It has been tried in the past, and it simply resulted in chaos and tremendous dissatisfaction amongst the officials, because one official says that he is entitled to an allowance because his circumstances are much more difficult than those of another man in another place, and another official in his turn then says that he is entitled to an allowance because he has to work under difficult circumstances. Once one starts paying allowances one lands oneself in an impossible position. But let me proceed. The hon. member for Transkeian Territories repeated a moment ago what he had said before, and that is that the Post Office is doing nothing for its employers as far as allowances and housing are concerned. But do you know what kind of person the hon. member really is? He always speaks before he knows what the facts are, because he did not know what the facts were in this case, or else he would not have asked me for the facts. Hon. members who were present here at question time this morning will recall that I only replied to the hon. member’s question this morning and that he had made this allegation yesterday already; he put forward the wild story yesterday that we were doing nothing for our officials in the Transkei as far as housing was concerned. I gave him the true facts this morning. The Post Office has two houses in Umtata, and it is building two more, and two more are to be addded subsequently.

They were purchased a long time ago.

That is not the point.

Order! The hon. member must not interrupt the hon. the Minister so much.

The point is that the hon. member is misrepresenting the facts either deliberately or unknowingly. In other words, he gets up in this House and makes various allegations in connection with matters which he knows nothing about. I explained to him that the Post Office already had ten houses in other parts of the Transkei, that three were being purchased or built at the moment and that money had been provided for an additional ten. But the hon. member comes along here and announces to the world that as far as the provision of houses is concerned, the Post Office is doing nothing for its officials. Can one take any notice of such a person? Is he a credit to his side of the House? I think that if he acts in that way he is not only undermining his own position, but is also undermining his own party even further.

Let me come to the hon. member for Drakensberg (Mrs. S. M. van Niekerk). The hon. member told us a very confusing story about a lady who made telephone calls from various places and everything was wrong and in a state of absolute confusion and eventually she got through to Valkenberg. Sir, I wonder whether she did not perhaps telephone from Valkenberg. That was the impression that I got.

I now want to deal with a few of the wild allegations that were made here by the hon. member for Orange Grove (Mr. E. G. Malan) and to which we have already grown so accustomed. He said that the Post Office had made a profit of R13,000,000; that is quite true, but he presented it in a way which suggested that that was an enormous profit and that the public was being exploited. The hon. member reminds me of someone who says, “A calf has been born here, a wonderful calf which weighs a ton,” but who does not mention the fact that it is an elephant calf. The hon. member mentions the profit of R 13,000,000, but he does not mention the enormous capital amount which is invested in the Post Office; he does not mention to you that the Post Office’s Telecommunications Division alone represents an investment of R292,000,000, and that amount does not even include the buildings. A profit of R13,000,000 on R292,000,000 represents a paltry 4.4 per cent. But the hon. member went further; he made the allegation that we were squeezing the country dry and that we were using the Post Office as a taxation machine. But is that in fact the position? Let me just remind the hon. member of the true facts. Sir, I have looked up the figures for the period from 1956 to 1964. Let me tell you what percentage profit the National Party Government made on the Post Office. In the first year a profit of 1.2 per cent was made on the capital investment. In the next year it was 1.25 per cent, and the year after that .54 per cent. Then the rates had to be increased, subsequent to which the profit was 5.6 per cent in one year, 4.5 per cent in the next, then 4.9 per cent, then 4.7 per cent, and in the next year 4.4 per cent—a constantly declining tendency. But what did the United Party Government do? Do these figures indicate that the National Party Government is using the Post Office as a taxation machine, as the hon. member wants to make out? Surely it is simply ridiculous to make an allegation such as that? Hon. members on the other side are always covering up the actions of the United Party, or otherwise they claim that we are guilty of the same actions of which they were guilty. In 1943-4 they made a profit of 14.1 per cent, in 1944-5 14.4 per cent and in 1945-6 13.1 per cent. In 1942 they increased the rates because they had only made a profit of 10.2 per cent in that year. However, they were not satisfied merely to increase the rates, but they also imposed a levy of 12i per cent on all telephone accounts because they said that the profit on the Post Office was still too small.

They rendered efficient service.

“Efficient service!” That is a very efficient method of fleecing the public. Let me point out to hon. members what the official policy of the United Party was. That policy was stated by Mr. Hofmeyr in this House in 1940. He said—

A few years later he reminded the House of the same principle—

That has never been our policy. Our policy has always been that the Post Office should only pay for itself as far as possible.

The hon. member for Orange Grove said— this is typical of that hon. member and of the United Party—that there had been so many resignations that out of 44,000 people in the Post Office 17,000 were temporary employees. Those are more or less his words as I wrote them down. Out of the 44,000 persons in the Post Office 40 per cent are temporary employees! He wanted to create the impression that there had been so many resignations that only 60 per cent of the employees were permanent officials. That is not true. The hon. member deliberately included 9,000 Bantu labourers who were engaged on construction work. They are casual labourers who come and go. He did that in order to come forward with a sensational figure of 17,000 resignations! The picture is a totally different one. If we take it at its most unfavourable, then only 10 per cent of the Post Office staff are temporary employees. Why must the hon. member always misrepresent the position like that? Why cannot hon. members on the other side give a fair and factual representation of the position in the Post Office? Why must the facts always be misrepresented?

The hon. member did me a great honour the other day. When I was replying to a policy motion in the Other Place, he came over there and listened carefully to what I was saying. And yesterday the hon. member said that the Minister had declared in the Other Place that in all the years the United Party had been in power it had increased the salaries of the post office staff only once. Then he said that the Minister was wrong, because the United Party had increased the salaries all along. He told us that they had increased the salaries every few months as the cost of living increased. Let us analyse that statement. When we took over from the United Party we naturally had to take over that system as well for a certain period of time. We could also have boasted that we had increased the salaries every three months, but have we ever done so? No. Is that true? Is that not totally misleading? If there is a rise in the cost of living and you then increase the salaries accordingly you have done no more than merely to even up the position.

We did that every three months; you are doing it every five years.

The hon. member still cannot see the point. I suggest that he should first listen a bit before speaking again. The hon. member may perhaps be able to mislead the ordinary public with that, but in actual fact that was no increase. When one speaks of a salary increase one is thinking in terms of a real increase. One is not thinking of a technical, abstract increase. Were those people better off in any way? Did they earn any more because their salaries had been brought into line with the cost of living? Of course not; they did not gain anything by that. It was not an actual increase of salary—it may have been one technically, but it was not a real increase. The hon. member forgot to point out that that action on the part of the United Party was a trick. As a matter of fact it was a scandal, because do you know what they did, Mr. Chairman? Every time there was a rise in the cost of living they waited a little while and then increased the salaries accordingly. But those increases were not taken into account for pension purposes. In other words, if there had been no rise in the cost of living and the salaries had not been increased, the real income of the pensioner would have been very much higher. During the time the United Party was in power the people received those increases while they were in the service, but when they retired their pensions were calculated on their original salary, exclusive of the cost-of-living allowance. That is how they treated their people. We could not continue that unfair system. Our moral sense of justice towards our own people made it impossible for us to carry on with that system of the United Party. We consolidated the cost-of-living allowance with the basic salary so that they could draw a reasonable pension.

I do not think the United Party can glory in those techniques of theirs. If I were the hon. member I would not have mentioned them.

The following is also typical of the hon. member. He said that the Post Office was the Cinderella of the Public Service. He said that the post office staff were getting salaries which were lower than those paid in the rest of the Public Service, and that their conditions of service were poorer than those in the rest of the Public Service. Is the hon. member aware of what has been happening lately? Does he know about the increases which have been introduced as from 1 April? Does he know what happened before that? He is the one who professes to know everything about the Post Office. Either he does not know what is happening or he was misleading the House. The true facts are these: A special committee consisting of the Postmaster-General and the head of the Public Service Commission, Dr. Steyn, was appointed. They made investigations in order to determine whether there was any discrimination in any respect as far as the post office staff vis-à-vis the rest of the Public Service was concerned. They did find a few instances, but very, very few. The Government then immediately made further investigations to see how it could assist the post office officials apart from making adjustments. The Government subsequently eliminated ail discrimination. In many cases the position of the post office staff was improved. Does the hon. member now have the right to say that the Post Office is the Cinderella of the Public Service? Does he have the right to say that the post office staff are receiving inferior treatment as compared with the staff in the rest of the Public Service?

That is what the staff associations are saying.

Now I understand! The hon. member is the spokesman of certain people whom he calls the staff associations. Is he then a person who sits in this House as one on whom one can rely, as one who speaks from his own convictions, or does he always speak on the basis of what he hears from others? Does he take no notice of the true facts? Does the hon. member know nothing about what is happening in this House? He is the man who poses as the authority on the Post Office on that side of the House. I think it is time that the hon. member went and arraigned himself before his leader.

I cannot possibly deal with all the misrepresentations made by the hon. member. I just want to refer to a few more. The hon. member said that the Post Office under this Government was such a monstrosity that in some cases it had increased the rates by 100 per cent and in other cases by 150 per cent. He said, in other words, that the Post Office had made everything expensive. He does not tell us that the prices of everything in South Africa have increased. He acts as though it is only the Post Office which has increased its rates. Take the salary of a post office clerk. In 1948 it was R300, and to-day it is R900, or R 1,002 for a matriculant. That is the commencing salary. The position in the case of postmen is approximately the same. In other words, the salaries have increased threefold. Take the hon. member’s own position. In 1948 a Member of Parliament received R2,000, but what does he receive to-day, inclusive of his allowance? More than three times as much. The hon. member is entitled to get that, because the prices of everything in South Africa have increased, but the Post Office dare not increase the rates, even though everything in the country has increased in price. Why this kind of action on the part of the Opposition? Why this kind of exaggerations? I do not even want to call it “misleading”. There can only be one of two reasons. I take it that the first reason is that they will stop at nothing in order to present this side of the House in an unfavourable light. The other question that occurs to me, Mr. Chairman, is whether there is not something much worse behind it. Let me explain the human psychology to you.

Business suspended at 12.45 p.m. and resumed at 2.20 p.m.

Afternoon Sitting

Mr. Chairman, when business was suspended I was dealing with the allegation made by the hon. member for Orange Grove in regard to the increase in tariffs. The hon. member insinuated that we were continually increasing tariffs and that this was wrong. We must accept that a post office is an essential thing in any country. A country must have a post office. There are two ways of financing it. One must either make the post office users pay according to the use they make of those services, or else one must obtain the necessary funds by imposing a tax on the whole population. With the present system, whereby each one pays to the extent to which he uses the Post Office, we find this interesting position: The persons who contribute most towards the funds of the Post Office are not the small men, the ordinary man in the street, but the big companies, the big businesses and institutions. I know of one firm which posts approximately 1,000,000 letters a month. The only alternative, if the hon. member does not want tariffs to be increased, is to tax the public for the maintenance of the Post Office. If one does it by way of taxation it means that the whole population must pay for it. In other words, the rich man, the big companies, etc., will benefit from it. The man who will pay will be the small man and the middle class man. Is the hon. member advocating that? There is no third method. One must maintain the Post Office by making people pay according to the use they make of the services, or else by levying taxation. It often seems to me that the hon. member either does not realize the consequences of his proposals, or that he only favours the big man and big business.

Nobody denies that difficulties exist. Nobody denies that there are sometimes delays in postal deliveries. We do not deny that mistakes are sometimes made. We do not deny that there is a shortage of staff. Nor did the Postmaster say that the position was any worse than that. In his report he said that the shortage of staff we had at the moment was greater than it had ever been before, and that is true. There is no danger of a collapse in the Post Office.

The staff associations say so.

It is the friends of the hon. members for Turffontein and Orange Grove who say that. I say it is not the normal, reasonable post office official who says so. Only certain people say it. One asks oneself what the motive behind it is. [Interjections.]

Order! The hon. member for Turffontein keeps on talking, in spite of the fact that I called for order.

This course of action on the part of the United Party is not coincidental. As I said before, one must clearly infer from their actions that they are trying to depict the Government in the wrong light, however reasonably the Government may act, and in addition they also have an ulterior motive. One cannot help but think that they have an ulterior motive. They would be greatly pleased if the telecommunications services of South Africa were to land in trouble. Their course of action is designed to assist that. Let me remind the hon. member of the effect of their actions in another respect. Let us go back into history a little. A number of years ago the same course of action was adopted in certain teachers’ circles. Teachers repeatedly belittled their own profession; they said the salaries were too low and that it was not worth while following that profession. The effect of that was practically a collapse in the education of the country because nobody wanted to enter that profession. Teachers abandoned the profession. Is that not the situation which hon. members are trying to achieve in the Post Office? They exaggerate everything; they put everything in the wrong light, thereby sowing dissatisfaction and unhappiness among the post office staff, and if dissatisfaction exists it can have only one result, namely that officials are less inclined to work there, that they resign on a larger scale, or do their work with less enthusiasm. If one no longer has pride in the institution for which one works, one does not give of one’s best. Is that not what hon. members want to achieve? Is it not a deliberate attempt on the part of the United Party to put the Post Office into disfavour in the eyes of its own people, thereby causing still more trouble in the Post Office? Is that the motive?

Let us for a moment try to see the whole matter in the correct perspective. In order to do so, I must point out their exaggerations to hon. members. As the result of resignations there has been a shortage of staff in the Post Office, but do you know what the shortage is, Sir? Not the huge numbers mentioned by hon. members opposite. The figures I am going to mention are in respect of the first three months of this year. The shortage of post office officials was 2,424.

Does that figure also include the permanent posts which are filled temporarily?

It excludes the technical and professional staff, which is not so big. In fact, it does not mean, as was insinuated by hon. members opposite, that the staff of the Post Office has been reduced. The Post Office staff still increases every year. When one says there is a shortage of personnel, it means that there are fewer officials than are required. It simply means that there are 2,424 people fewer than are necessary to meet the ever-increasing demand for postal services. There are not fewer officials in the service of the Post Office. The number is still increasing, but we do not have the number in employment which we should like to have and which we regard as desirable. Nor should hon. members forget that the activities of the Post Office expand tremendously every year, and because the work is continuously expanding, more and more staff are required. Just consider the fact that the Post Office during the last three years respectively received 40,000, 48,000 and 59,000 additional telephones, which all have to be serviced and kept in order. Hon. members will understand that a much greater staff is needed for that. If in adddition hon. members recollect that at the moment there are more than 1,000,000 telephones and that postal traffic is also increasing so that at the moment we are already handling more than 1,100,000,000 items of postal matter per annum, i.e. approximately 3,000,000 a day, it can be understood that with this gigantic number of postal items which have to be handled mistakes will occasionally slip in, and because mistakes occur the conclusion should not be drawn that the postal service has deteriorated, but that the number of mistakes should also be seen in relation to the number of postal items handled.

If we now analyse the real position, we find that in regard to the delivery of post there are delays mainly in three places, Pretoria, Johannesburg and Durban, and to a lesser degree on the Rand. But those delays are not very serious. The delays at the moment are from 12 to 24 hours. We should not forget that we already have more than a million telephones, and that the telephone calls this year amounted to more than 1,290,000,000. With such a tremendous number of telephone calls, mistakes must inevitably occur, but that alone does not prove that the telephone service is bad. We should view it in relation to the total number of telephone calls made. Even with the best machinery in the world, mistakes can slip in, and where one is dealing with people, and it is human beings who have to put through the telephone calls and handle and deliver the post, can hon. members opposite say that no mistakes should occur? Our Post Office constantly does everything it possibly can to provide better services and to remedy the defects which still exist.

In regard to the whole picture it is necessary to bear in mind certain basic facts. The first fact is that no Government has unlimited capital available. A Government cannot just make available any capital amount. There is a limit to everything, and there is a limit to the capital which any Government can obtain, and which it is desirable to obtain. And because that capital is limited, it is the duty of any Government to ensure that it is carefully distributed according to the diverse needs of the country. South Africa is not yet in the position of America where capital formation has already been going on on a large scale for more than 100 years. South Africa is still on the threshold of the process of industrialization. We cannot afford all the luxuries that America can; we cannot afford the same facilities as America, those facilities to which the hon. member for Parktown (Mr. Emdin) referred. In America the telephone services have been mechanized for years already. In South Africa we are busy with that at the moment. But one does not expect a young, growing boy to enjoy the same luxuries as a rich man who has been making money all his life. It is to be expected that we in South Africa must also go through a period in which we shall have to be prepared to manage with less than is available in the big countries which are already fully developed economically.

There is also a second fact which we should remember, namely that at the moment we have a period of high conjuncture, that we are experiencing a boom, with tremendous development in every sphere, and as the result of that increasingly more people are required, but our country has only a limited population. There are only a limited number of people who can fill those positions. In other words, we have reached a stage in our history where there is too much work for the population and not, as in the time of the United Party, where there is too little work for the population. I do think that the position in which there is too much work for the people is better than when there is too little. As the result of the tremendous expansion, increasingly more demands are made on the Post Office. More telephones and more exhanges are required, more calls are being made and long distance telephone calls between one business and another are increasing tremendously, at a tempo of 7,000,000 per annum. Increasingly more capital is required. But increasingly more capital is also required for our transport services, our roads, our power, the provision of water, health services, agricultural services, etc. The post office is only one of these activities and it is entitled to its share, its fair share, of the money available.

Let us now come to the personnel position. The Post Office has large numbers of young people, and particularly women, in its service. They are young people who are on the threshold of their lives, who in many cases have not yet adopted a definite course in life, and who gradually, during the course of the first three or four years, often discover that they would prefer to go in another direction, and consequently they leave the Post Office to do so. If we analyse it we find that the majority of resignations from the Post Office are by officials in their first to their fourth year. But in addition, there is another very interesting factor, namely that the tempo of resignations becomes increasingly slower every year. In 1958 the number of resignations was 7,600, and every year thereafter the number decreased, with the exception of a small increase here and there, until in 1963 only 5,600 resigned, and that in spite of the fact that the staff of the Post Office steadily increased in numbers. There was only one sudden change, and that was in 1964. Last year, after these years of decreases in the number of resignations, there was suddenly a tremendous increase again and the number amounted to more than 10,000. Now let me analyse this position further. The resignations which systematically decreased from 1958 to 1963 prove one thing, namely that there is no chronic dissatisfaction in the Post Office, -because otherwise there would not, despite this high conjuncture in South Africa, have been fewer resignations year by year.

The postal deliveries are not really as hon. members tried to pretend. As -I have already said, delays in postal deliveries mainly take place in Pretoria, Johannesburg and Durban, and to a lesser extent on the Rand. But Durban still normally receives two postal deliveries a day, and one delivery in the suburbs. In Johannesburg and in Germiston (Central) there are still two deliveries.

If it is delivered.

Elsewhere on the Rand there is only one delivery a day. For the most part, Pretoria still has two deliveries. Cape Town still has two deliveries on week-days. If the position were as bad as hon. members opposite contend, two deliveries a day would not have been possible and we would barely have been able to have one delivery a day. But the fact that in so many places where the difficulty is greatest there are still two deliveries a day proves that the position is not by far as serious as hon. members imply. In fact, on numerous occasions proof is afforded of how efficient the Post Office still is. In spite of the resignations last year, during Christmas time, when postal matter is three times as much as normally, we managed to keep the delivery of postal matter up to date. And at some places they only fell one day behind. That surely proves that the position is not quite as hon. members have painted it.

Let me now come to the telephone services. I have pointed out that during the last few years a large number of additional telephones have been installed, viz. 40,000 in 1962, 48,000 in 1963 and 59,000 in 1964. Consequently, increasingly greater demands were made on the telephone service and from the very nature of the matter that caused delays, but the delays which occurred were mainly in Johannesburg on the lines from Johannesburg to Bloemfontein, Johannesburg to Cape Town, Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg to Durban and Johannesburg to East London. On the other lines few trunk line delays take place, and as far as most of the other places are concerned, matters are practically normal.

I revert again to the steps we take in regard to delays, but let me pause for another moment to deal with the position of the salaries of Post Office staff. The hon. member for Orange Grove pointed out that during the United Party régime, in the ten years from 1939 to 1949, there was a salary increase for the Post Office staff on one occasion. That is how concerned they were about the Post Office staff! And what was the position under the Nationalist Government? You will find that we on this side of the House have always gone out of our way to improve the position of the Post Office staff. There were increases in the salaries of Post Office staff, sometimes together with the rest of the Public Service, in July 1951, in October 1953, again in 1955, in 1956, in 1958, again in January 1963 and now again in April 1965. In other words, the position of the Post Office staff under this Government has been improved every two or two and a half years. And let us now take the real income. Let us take not only the increases in the salaries of Post Office personnel, but let us take the increase in their real income. Then we find that between 1 January 1948 and 1 January 1964 the consumers’ prices, in other words the cost of living, increased by 66 per cent, but do hon. members know that the salaries of the Post Office staff were increased by this Government by 118 per cent? And if we then take into consideration that the wages of factory workers during the same period were increased by only 83 per cent on an average, one can see how infinitely better off the Post Office staff are under the National Party Government than under the United Party Government. May I also remind hon. members of another fact mentioned by Dr. Diederichs a few months ago in this House? He compared the position in September 1962 with that in September 1964, and pointed out that consumers’ prices had increased in that period by 4.8 per cent, but he pointed out at the same time that salaries and wages in the Post Office had been increased by 14.9 per cent during that period. Whichever way one regards it, the position of the Post Office official under the National Party Government has steadily improved.

But that on its own does not solve our problem, because with the tremendous development in the private sector during this period of high conjuncture we are experiencing in South Africa, where this great variety of new factories and businesses and other activities all require more personnel, they are still drawing staff away from the Public Service, the Railways service, the Airways, the Defence Force, and also from the Post Office. A Post Office official is normally specially trained for his work. Whether he is a telephone operator or a teleprinter operator, or whether he serves at the counter, or whether he is a telegraphist or a technician, all those people are trained by the Post Office for periods varying from six weeks to five years, and it costs the State from R 1,000 to train a Post Office clerk to R6,000 to train a technician. When these people have been specially trained they are so highly efficient that the private sector is very keen on obtaining their services. During the past year many of them were induced to resign as the result of offers of salaries exceeding by R600 and R900 and R1,000 per annum the salaries they earned in our service, increases which were offered by the private sector to draw away the people we had trained. Sometimes that is done in the most shameless fashion. Some of our chief officials have gone to certain firms which had enticed away our technicians and asked them whether they were not ashamed to entice away in this manner people whom we had trained at such a high cost for the service of the State. Then we simply got the reply: “You train them, we get them”. That is the reply one gets.

Hon. members opposite see nothing wrong in a man being trained to perform certain work at great expense and then someone else deriving the benefit of that. Our object is to improve the position of the staff, but there is also a second consideration, and that is that we should not harm the sound economic position in South Africa, and it is particularly necessary at this time, and in the conditions prevailing in the world, that we should make South Africa’s position as solid and as strong as possible while at the same time not harming the position of our own personnel. If the Post Office were simply to increase salaries without improving its services we could be sure of one thing, and that is that the same would have to be done in the Public Service, in the Railway Serivce, the Police, the Defence Force and the public utilities. Then the private sector would not be able to sit still. No one would want to remain behind. Everybody would increase salaries. Would we be any better off if all salaries were increased? Because then the price of everything would rise, the price of food and of clothes and of housing, and it would not be long before prices would catch up with the increases, with the result that the staff would be no better off, and the price structure of the whole country would have risen considerably, and our production costs would be higher and competition in the world market would be infinitely more difficult. Then one’s problems in the economic sphere would really begin. There is not one of us who does not wish the officials to have increased salaries, but we should be very careful at this time in granting increases.

In 1962 and in 1963 we increased the salaries of the postal staff, and there was the greatest satisfaction in regard to the increases. If hon. members doubt it, let me quote from a leading article in the P. & T. Herald of May 1963 (translation)—

Soon after that they followed this up with a further leading article (translation)—

To sum up everything, we just want to mention briefly what was finally obtained: (a) an improved salary structure; (b) a new post structure; (c) clear signs of a completely independent Post Office.

That was the position at the end of 1963. But a year later the Post Office personnel had a new problem. In December 1964 they came to see me and their chiefs and alleged that in certain respects there was discrimination between the Post Office official and the Public Service official, with the result that according to their calculations a Post Office official at the end of his career was worse off than his friend who had joined the Public Service. In other words, it all concerned discrimination, and they assured us that if this discrimination were removed there would be complete satisfaction in the Post Office. They intimated the same to the hon. the Prime Minister also at the beginning of this year. During their congress they sent a telegram to the Prime Minister on 3 March, in which they used the following words: They urgently request the Government to consider salary improvements for the Post Office staff because of the unfavourable position in which the Post Office staff find themselves in comparison with the rest of the Public Service and other bodies. Note that they say “because of the unfavourable position” in comparison with the rest of the Public Service. They refer only to the discrimination. That is what they are concerned about. The Prime Minister replied to them and said that an investigation would be made into this alleged unfavourable comparison. In other words, it is quite clear that all they were concerned about was the discrimination. In the leading article in The Herald of April 1965 the Post and Telegraphs Association emphasized the same thing. They said—

In other words, it all concerned the alleged unfavourable comparison, the alleged discrimination. The Government appointed a committee of inquiry, as I have already stated, consisting of the Postmaster-General and the Chairman of the Public Service Commission. They investigated everything carefully and eventually they found a minimal number of points of discrimination. The Government then went further and itself again investigated the whole matter. The result of this was that not only was the alleged discrimination remedied but that further concessions were made to the postal officials. It caused a series of regradings to take place and it created new posts. It made possible a whole series of promotions. It made certain grades continuous, so that a man in certain cases could progress automatically from his initial salary to a fairly high salary of R2,760. It appreciably regraded the posts of technicians. It made improvements everywhere. The effect of all this is that today there are in the service of the Post Office just under 9,000 members of the staff who will automatically be able to rise to a salary of R2,400 per annum, apart from all the other grades which go still higher. In other words, there is little reason in the Post Office to-day for dissatisfaction because of salaries or because of any discrimination between salaries in the Post Office and those in the Public Service. We have this remarkable phenomenon that in 1946, after a systematic drop, there was suddenly an increase in the number of resignations from 5,600 to 10,800. The explanation for this increase is to be found in two facts which I have already mentioned; firstly, the fact that private industries are experiencing a shortage of personnel and that they are willing to offer higher salaries to our staff to attract them to industry. The other reason is that there are persons in certain circles who systematically encourage dissatisfaction amongst the Post Office staff with the result that they become unhappy, and, of course, as soon as a person becomes unhappy in the service he resigns. In spite of the tremendous increase in the number of resignations, there is a total shortage of only 2,424. We are doing everything in our power to wipe out this shortage. In the first place we made it possible some time ago for married women to obtain permanent appointments in the postal service. We have arranged for the staff to work overtime when it becomes necessary, and the overtime varies from an hour to four hours per day; we have engaged the services of part-time staff amongst whom there are many skilled persons such as punching machine operators who are employed in private businesses and who do the same sort of work for us after their normal working hours. We employ numerous women on a part-time basis after normal office hours at times which suit them. At times, when it is possible to do so, we make use of the services of schoolboys, although I must say that the Education Departments are averse to the employment of schoolboys except during holidays because they are afraid that it may interfere with their studies. We make use on a large scale of the services of Post Office and other pensioners. We are at present employing a large number of our own pensioners who have come back to work for us again. We are also employing non-Whites, as we have always done, particularly to serve their own people. Coloureds have been employed in the Post Office since 1880 in the Cape and since 1893 on the Rand. We are continuing to employ Coloureds in those places where they have been employed in the past, and in a few cases we are employing them in places where they have not hitherto been employed. We are employing a total of 308 non-Whites in a temporary capacity but we are still trying, as far as possible, to have the work in the Post office done by Whites. We have 1,032 Coloureds in our employ serving their own people. In addition to this, we are continuing to recruit officials throughout the country. We advertise for recruits at every Post Office and every postmaster, every welfare officer, is at the same time also a recruiting agent. We are continually advertising in newspapers and periodicals and over the radio. At the same time we try to remove every possible grievance. Where allegations are made that there is discrimination, the matter is immediately investigated and the grievance is removed. Where there is a shortage of housing at certain places, we make available official residences. A large sum of money has just been made available again to the Post Office to enable it to build houses for its postmasters and technicians. We are at present investigating the possibility of introducing an improved scheme of housing loans in terms of which officials will be able to acquire their own homes by means of loans from building societies. In order to obviate resignations we have made it possible for members of the staff in the junior ranks, that is to say, staff members with one to six years’ service, to be given up to three special increments with a view to encouraging promising young men. We are also increasing the degree of efficiency in the Post Office. We have a large O. & M. Division which continually institutes investigations with a view to making it possible for the same amount of work to be done with fewer staff. We have some of our most capable officials in the O. & M. division, and these people are continually doing work studies, etc., and devising plans to make better use of the staff and to eliminate unnecessary work with a view to improving the whole position so that we will be able to do more work with the same number of staff. In this way we have already eliminated hundreds of posts and saved hundreds of thousands of rand per annum. If the same amount of work can be done by fewer people, it is surely proof of efficiently. Let me take the year 1958-9 as an example: In that year the volume of our work increased by 6.6 per cent, but the number of staff increased by only 3.9 per cent. Take the last year in respect of which I have the figures here, the year 1963-4: Although the volume of work increased by 10.7 per cent the number of staff increased by 2.6 per cent. In other words, whereas in 1958 the percentage increase in our staff was half as much as the percentage increase in the volume of work, last year the percentage increase in staff was a quarter of the percentage increase in the volume of work. These figures clearly point to efficiency.

I have already said that we have special schools in the Post Office to promote efficiency. We have 18 training schools where members of the staff are trained to equip them for their work. We are continually mechanizing and studying the position with a view to improving efficiency. Practically all our work in the accounts divisions has already been mechanized. Our bookkeeping system has been very largely mechanized. In the Post Office saving bank we are at present studying the possibility of electronification. In co-operation with the C.S.I.R. we have been studying the question of the mechanical sorting of post over the past two years, because although it may seem to be a simple procedure it is infinitely difficult. It took the experts of the C.S.I.R. two years to submit proposals that we were able to accept. We have now placed an order for one of the large new automatic sorting machines.

Delays are at present being experienced in our long-distance telephone services. There are sometimes delays of up to 90 minutes between Cape Town and Johannesburg in spite of the fact that we are continually constructing new lines, but it must be remembered that enormous expansion is taking place in South Africa. These long-distance lines are used not by the small man but by the large businesses. We found that it was impossible to carry on under the old system and we started some years ago to apply the latest methods. One of the latest methods is the micro-wave system. This system is already in operation between Durban and Margate, where it was essential to introduce it as a result of the damage caused by storms year after year to telegraph poles and lines. It has also been in operation for quite a number of years between Johannesburg and Klerksdorp. Between Johannesburg and Durban it will come into operation in about July of this year. It is already in operation also between Johannesburg, Welkom and Bloemfontein and we now propose to introduce it also between Bloemfontein and Port Elizabeth in July of next year. It will also be introduced between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth in July 1967.

In other words, after July 1967 all the large centres in South Africa will be linked up by means of this latest method. This will mean that we will have up to 400 channels instead of the 37 that we have at the present time between Johannesburg and Cape Town. What is interesting in this connection is that when it becomes necessary to have more than 400 channels, it will be possible to enlarge the apparatus with the result that it will become possible to cope with anything up to 5,000 calls simultaneously. We are continually developing therefore, but it must be remembered that in comparison with a country like America we are still a young country. We have to be prepared sometimes to endure a certain amount of inconvenience and we must be prepared to put up with a certain amount of delay. That is also what happened in America; these things were not all accomplished within the space of a year; it also took years there. We can consider ourselves fortunate in South Africa that we are going to have such an efficient system within the space of just a few years.

The last point that I want to mention is that not only do we have delays on the longdistance telephone lines, but we are already afraid that within the space of three years we are going to experience delays in our communications with the outside world, because our telecommunication links with the outside world consist largely of radio channels and an antiquated low-speed cable, and radio channels, for various reasons, are very unreliable, inter alia, because of weather conditions and atmospheric disturbances. But they are also unreliable because they can be interfered with by foreign agencies. We are limited to 54 speech channels. That is our allocation in the high frequency spectrum because these channels are distributed over the entire world and the possibility of our getting more than 54 speech channels is practically excluded. That is why it is essential to devise alternative plans. Our foreign telecommunication traffic is increasing so rapidly that according to calculations that we have made our radio channels will be fully occupied by 1967, and it is essential, therefore, to have additional links.

It is for this reason that the Government has now decided to lay an undersea cable between Cape Town and Europe, a cable that will link up with other cables, some of which already exist and others are still to be laid. Tentative arrangements have already been made in connection with co-operation between ourselves and the bodies in control of the existing and the proposed systems. This cable will be one of the most modern in the world. It will have more than 360 two-way speech channels, a number which according to all the experts will be sufficient to meet all our requirements until 1990. In round figures it will cost approximately R50,000,000. The money will be provided by various interested parties. The preliminary negotiations have already taken place and last week a company called the South Atlantic Cable Corporation was registered, in which the I.D.C. will play an important role. I hope that when this cable comes into operation in three years’ time we will be able to meet all our requirements as far as communications with the outside world are concerned and that there will no longer be delays then.

At this stage I want to reply to a few specific charges. The hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Durrant) has based his attack on the ground that the policy of external broadcasting services will allegedly be laid down by the Minister of Posts.

But you said so yourself.

I said that the Broadcasting Corporation would be responsible for it, because we do not want to make propaganda over this external service. We want to use our external service to give a factual representation of what is happening in South Africa but no propaganda is needed for that purpose; all that is necessary is a factual representation. I also told the hon. member that the Government was bearing the cost of this service, with the result that he would be able to call the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs to account in this House, which he is not able to do in the case of the finances of the S.A.B.C. because the S.A.B.C. pays for its own services out of its own funds. The hon. member went on to say that the external broadcasting services should be under the control of the Government, that is to say, under the control of the Departments of External Affairs and Information. In other words, he wants us in South Africa to follow a policy which is entirely different from the policy of America and England. The B.B.C. is in charge of England’s foreign services and it is not under the whip of the British Government. The Minister of Posts in England is always at pains to point out that the B.B.C. is an independent body and that he cannot be called to account in Parliament for what the B.B.C. broadcasts. But the hon. member wants us to follow a policy which differs from that of the British and the American Governments; he wants the Government to be associated with the external broadcasting services. Sir, what is his reason? He wants the Government to approve of those services. He has a motive in asking for this because he knows that the moment the Government controls this service the whole world will regard our broadcasting service as suspect and will take no notice of it because it will be regarded as the propaganda machine of the Government. That is what the hon. member wants. He is already completely breaking down this external broadcasting service.

That is not true.

Why then does he want a procedure here which differs from that followed in America and England? He can only have one motive and that is to undermine the authority of this service.

Did I not ask that it be placed under the Prime Minister?

It would still be under the Government then. Sir, does the hon. member know that this external service of ours has existed for years already and that there have never been complaints against it? Why is he complaining now? All we are now doing is to use more powerful transmitters, but now sudddenly this service is being attacked. Why?

The hon. member wants to know in what languages these services will be broadcast. They will be broadcast in Afrikaans, English, Portuguese, Swahili, Spanish, Dutch and German.

I think I have already replied to the question of the hon. member for Simonstown (Mr. Gay) in connection with the Simonstown Post Office but there is one further question that he asked in connection with postage stamp machines. The reason why they have not yet been put into operation is because the design of our coins has not yet been finally determined. We are waiting until we know what the final decision is before we proceed to adapt these machines.

Can the Minister give any indication when that will be?

I cannot say with certainty but I hope it will be fairly soon.

The hon. member for Graaff-Reinet referred to a certain Coloured township and to the provision of post office facilities there. At this stage I can only say that we will give our serious consideration to this matter.

The hon. member for Parktown (Mr. Emdin) made a typical rich man’s speech. He adopted the attitude of an American who lives in a rich country that has an enormous amount of capital at its disposal and where the telephone system has been developed to such an extent over the years that one can simply lift the receiver and dial any part of the world. He forgets that economically we are a comparatively young country and that it will still take a long time before we can compete with America. With increasing capital formation in this country it will become possible for us to improve these services. I think that is the only answer that I need give him. We in South Africa cannot expect all the facilities which people have in an old-established and rich country. We must be prepared to cut our coat according to our cloth.

The hon. member for Randfontein (Dr. Mulder), as well as other hon. members, touched upon the difficulty that is experienced in connection with the telephone directory. I have experienced that difficulty myself. The fact of the matter, however, is that one no longer knows where the boundaries of the various suburbs on the Rand are situated. One thinks that a certain person lives in Krugersdorp when he really lives in Marais-burg. It was then decided to arrange all the names alphabetically but this in turn gave rise to other difficulties. We have tried to find various solutions. One solution is to indicate the name of the suburb in which the man lives at the end of the line in which his name appears so that when one looks for the number of a certain “van der Merwe” and one knows that he lives in Roodepoort, it will be easily identifiable. That is a possible solution but we are still considering this whole matter.

Other hon. members who raised other matters are not here at the moment. The hon. member for Boland (Mr. Barnett) wanted to know how many Coloureds were in the employ of the Post Office. The number of Coloureds who have been appointed permanently to serve their own people has increased this year to 1,032. On the Rand, in the Southern Transvaal, and in Pretoria we have another 302 who have been appointed temporarily. The hon. member also wants to know what salary increases have been given to the Coloureds. The salary scales have been improved on three different occasions since 1961, with the result that a Coloured postal assistant whose maximum salary was formerly Rl,380 can now rise to R2,136, and a Coloured senior supervisor whose maximum salary used to be Rl,680 can now rise to Rl,968. The hon. member for Boland also asked a third question and that was whether we were prepared to pay overtime. I may say that both Coloureds and Whites are paid for overtime.

Why did you tell the House a fib (“Jok”)?

On a point of order, is the hon. member entitled to say that I told a fib?

Order! Did the hon. member mean that?

I merely asked a question. I did not mean it.

I think that disposes of all the questions raised by hon. members.

Sir, I think to-day is a sad day for the general public of South Africa in that there was no indication whatsoever in the speech of the hon. the Minister that he actually realizes the seriousness of the deterioration of the services in the Post Office and that he has no well-considered plan for alleviating the position. But, Sir, if it was a sad day for the public in general it was indeed a bitter and a solemn day for the Post Office workers who had been looking forward for two days to hearing a statement from the hon. the Minister that they would be granted some form of relief. Sir, there was not a spark of sympathy for the plight of the 44,000 Post Office workers in the speech of the hon. the Minister; there was not a crumb of comfort for them in his words. During a speech lasting I do not know how many hours he spent less than five minutes dealing with the actual plight of the workers in the Post Office. What were his words? He said that they had small grievances and that there was little reason for dissatisfaction. He even went so far as to accuse this side of the House of trying deliberately to cause the break-down of the Post Office. Sir, how can we be doing that when at the same time we are telling him how to avoid a breakdown?

Sir, has the hon. the Minister no heart for the ordinary Post Office worker? Is there to be no hope for them whatsoever? Is this the Minister’s final word? The Post Office workers are waiting to hear more. Must these thousands of people in the Post Office be left at the mercy of a prattling minor demagogue? When are they going to have a Minister looking after their genuine interests? Sir, let me say this; the Minister may spurn them, he may reject them, he may slap down the Post Office workers, but we say to the 44,000 workers in the Post Office, “We know what you are doing; we admire you for what you are doing; we admire the way you are putting up with the Minister; we realize what suffering you are experiencing; good luck to you! The people of South Africa are behind you Post Office workers; we will not desert you”.

Sir, I wish to turn to another aspect of the Minister’s task, one to which I should have liked to have devoted more time, but we know that limitations have been imposed upon all of us during this debate, and indeed in general in the Budget Debate. I want to deal very shortly with some aspects of the South African Broadcasting Corporation. First of all, I want to express my disappointment that the chairman of the Board of Governors of the S.A.B.C. is not readily available to Parliament to-day, where we have to consider a report drawn up by him and also signed by him. Surely Parliament is entitled to expect that he should have been present here to-day and that he should be readily available when this important report is discussed. Sir, I have been through this particular report. Instead of having him here, we have six or seven photographs of the chairman of the Board of Governors—full face, profile, smiling, serious—but that is no substitute for his presence here to-day.

Looking at this report we find that it is, as usual, informative and quite interesting about trivial and mundane matters and that it is silent about the things that really do matter. We are told by the chairman of the Board of Governors in this report that boeremusiek took up .21 per cent of the time of the programmes, and we are suitably impressed. We marvel at the fact that the loss of programme time on F.M. was reducedd from .30841 per cent to .18908 per cent, and, incidentally, we pause to pay tribute to the excellent work done by the engineering and technical staff of the S.A.B.C. Sir, we are staggered, in these days of labour shortages, to find that the S.A.B.C. could actually count and verify that it had received 23,426 unsolicited letters, 95 per cent of them favourable. When we go to the other side of the fence we find an even more interesting fact; we find that Bantu Radio received 1,274,695 letters last year of which, according to the Report, by far the majority contained favourable comments. Sir, I have worked out what it means. If you take six seconds to open a letter, to check whether its comment is favourable and then just put it on one side and count it, it would take one person more than 2,000 hours to count 1,274,695 so-called favourable letters. It would take fifty 40-hour weeks for one person just to count them. Is that what is happening in these days of a real labour shortage?

Do you never open letters you receive?

However, we note that there is apparently a great deal of industry amongst the Board of Governors because we find that their salaries and their expense accounts have gone up by R4,500. But we are less happy when we look at the things which this report does not contain. The Broadcasting Act provides that the name of every member of a political party who makes a political broadcast must be published specifically in this report and that the time occupied by that political broadcast must also be set out. What do we find? We find that this report says that there were no political broadcasts, but we do find that speeches on matters of national interest were delivered by gentlemen called H. F. Verwoerd, B. J. Vorster and P. M. K. le Roux.

The Broadcasting Act further requires that financial particulars shall be given of the S.A.B.C., and “particulars”, to my mind, and to anybody with some knowledge of English, means details. That indeed would have been the position if the Auditor-General could have verified the accounts of the S.A.B.C., but we know that he cannot do so. We find, for instance, that we are being asked again to pay an additional R400,000 this year for a loss on Bantu Radio, but nowhere is there a specified and detailed account of the income and expenditure of Bantu Radio. We are not told why another half a million rand has to be spent on Bantu Radio. I admit that Bantu Radio sometimes has good programmes; I admit that it does a great deal of good work, but why is there this loss, when it should surely be possible with this huge audience to cover that loss via advertising revenue?

Speaking of Bantu Radio I said that it had its good points. It also had some other points which are not so good, and here I refer to the news services on Bantu Radio. I have here a copy of the news service which was broadcast over the Zulu service in Durban, the Tsonga service in Pretoria, the North Sotho and the Venda-Sotho services and the Xhosa service in Grahamstown only a couple of days ago, on 29 April. In that news service a report was given of the debate on the Indian Education Bill. This was sent over to the editor of the Bantu News Service:

Hierdie oordrag van onderwyssake aan die Kleurlinggemeenskap is tot die uiterste toe teengestaan deur die Verenigde-Party opposisie ...

Quite correct—

That is factual, but then comes this comment—

“We won’t take any notice of criticism directed at constructive legislation.” This is the sort of thing that is happening in Bantu languages over the Bantu Radio. Sir, it approaches incitement of the Blacks against one section of the Whites in South Africa. I would also like to know why the hon. the Minister is asking for another R4,500,000 on capital account for the S.A.B.C. this year, without giving us details. Last year he told us that it was for the F.M. Service. This year we find in the report an entirely new item, an item of R4,000,000 representing capital assets which has not been brought into use. What are those capital assets? Are they buildings? If they are, why did the hon. the Minister not tell us last year that he was asking for R4,000,000 for F.M. Radio? For what other capital asset has the S.A.B.C. been using that money?

Sir, if time permits I should like to say a few words about the continued misuse of the radio for propaganda purposes. It is becoming worse and worse as time goes on.

A Goebbels service.

Sir, we have the subtle slant, the slight little twist and the misplaced emphasis; we had an example in the 7 o’clock English news service this morning. There is a war on in Vietnam; there was a crash in which 120 people were killed; there is a revolution going on in the Dominican Republic; great developments are taking place in the United States, and what was the first item in the news service? The fact that a certain Mr. George Golding had approved the Separate Representation of Voters Bill! And, Sir, it was the third time it had been repeated. [Time limit.]

I would like the hon. the Minister to explain to me the statement that there are 1,000 Coloured people employed in the Post Office to serve their own people. I think that is the phrase which the hon. the Minister used. Sir, I must join issue with the hon. the Minister in this regard. There are Coloured postmen in the areas of Somerset West, the Strand and Stellenbosch and they serve Europeans also, not only their own people. Sir, I will have this out with the Minister privately; I do not want to take up the time of the House, but I do want to make this one point about the Coloureds. The hon. the Minister knows that the Government’s policy is to create large Coloured group areas. Surely there must be post offices within those areas. I want to ask the hon. the Minister what provision is being made in the Post Office service for the training of Coloured technicians who at some time or other, in terms of the Government’s policy will have to attend to the post offices in the very large Coloured areas. Looking at this very excellent publication by the Postmaster-General I find that it says—

The hon. the Minister’s own report shows that there is a shortage of technicians. I want to ask the Minister to tell us once and for all why he cannot get educated Coloured boys, who come from the university at Bellville, and teach them to become telephone technicians. Sooner or later they will have to be employed in his Department. Why does the Minister not start now? Here is another opening for the Coloured people; it has to come sooner or later. Why does the hon. the Minister not make use of the services of Coloured youths for this purpose? Why must we continually have the reply that there are not enough people to fill vacancies. Sir, that statement is not correct. I have pressed the Government in the past and I will continue in the future to press the Government to use the Coloured youths of South Africa to meet the requirements of all Departments where there is a shortage of staff. Here you have a shortage of technicians, and these are posts which can be filled by Coloured youths, educated Coloured youths, but the Minister does not see fit to do so. Sir, we will never be able to overcome the shortage unless we use our available manpower to the full extent. Let me quote again from this report. Under the heading “technical trainees” it says—

If there is a continual decrease in the number of trainees, how does the Minister ever expect to overcome the shortage? How is it ever going to meet the staff requirements of his Department unless he makes use of the services of the Coloured people? I want to make this appeal to the Government: Do not try, as I said yesterday, to let the White people go it alone in this country; they cannot do it.

You must make use of the services of the Coloured people.

Order! The hon. member is repeating now.

I want to ask the Minister in conclusion to give me a reply now as to why he refuses to employ Coloured youths as trainee technicians because sooner or later their services will be required in the post offices in the Coloured areas.

There is not much to reply to. The hon. member for Orange Grove (Mr. E. G. Malan) insinuated that when one is a Prime Minister or a Minister of Justice one is unable to do anything else but talk politics. It is certainly provided for in the Act that it must be indicated in the report when people make political speeches over the radio. But the mere fact that the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice spoke over the radio does not prove that they spoke politics. Those were not political speeches It is just another attempt on his part to say something against the S.A.B.C. It just shows how little criticism the hon. member can really voice against the S.A.B.C.

The second point raised by the hon. member is that Radio Bantu is still run at a great loss in spite of the fact that there are so many Bantu listeners. He thinks that Radio Bantu should by this time have been self-supporting. The hon. member surely knows that advertisements do not constitute the only source of income of the S.A.B.C. One of its most important sources of income is the licence fees, and that applies also to Radio Bantu. One of the greatest forms of income of Radio Bantu will be the licence fees. The hon. member knows the Bantu; he knows that there are a tremendous number of old second-hand radios they obtain in various ways and for which they do not take out licences. In other words, the number of listeners among the Bantu is no indication at all as to the revenue the S.A.B.C. receives from licence fees. We expected that for the first few years there would not be enough revenue from licence fees to finance Radio Bantu. The hon. member will recollect that I told him that Radio Bantu would run at a loss for quite a number of years, when he asked me what the prospects were. In spite of the fact that Radio Bantu has done much better than we expected, it should be borne in mind that it will still run at a loss for an appreciable time. In fact, we expected it. The hon. member went further and tried to indicate that the S.A.B.C. gives slanted reports, and the only example he could mention was the fact that mention was made in the news service of the fact that Mr. Golding supported the Separate Representation of Voters Amendment Bill. The hon. member further said that Mr. Golding’s speech was reported over the radio, but that the war in the Dominican Republic was not reported.

On a point of explanation. I said that priority was given to that report.

Sir, if one listens to the news about the Dominican Republic one will find that that war has been in progress for days already. In almost every news report one hears about the war in the Dominican Republic. Here we now had a new news item, namely the fact that Mr. Golding supported the Bill to which I have referred. The hon. member always has much to say in regard to the fact that the voice of the representatives of the Coloureds should be heard, and that is precisely what was done in this case. The hon. member always says that it is important that the voice of the representatives of the Coloureds should be heard, but now he objects to Mr. Golding’s opinion being broadcast. Sir, the hon. member’s objection is not that Mr. Golding’s opinion was broadcast; his objection is that Mr. Golding was in favour of the Bill.

The hon. member for Boland (Mr. Barnett) asked that Coloured technicians should be trained to serve the Coloured population in the Coloured areas. But the matter is not quite so simple. The Coloured areas are not separate areas yet which can stand on their own feet. The link between the Coloured area and the White area is still of such a nature that one does not know where the one begins and the other ends in so far as telephone lines are concerned. It may still for years be difficult to delegate a man to serve only the Coloured community without also serving the White community as far as telephone services are concerned. It is a practical problem. The hon. member will have to be satisfied with this position for some years still. We shall only be able to consider taking this step when the new Coloured areas are established, as it is intended to do; only then can Coloureds be trained as technicians to serve their own people.

May I put a question to the hon. the Minister? The hon. member for Orange Grove wanted to know whether the hon. the Minister was prepared to review the salaries of Post Office workers. He has not replied to that yet.

I devoted such a large portion of my explanation to the problems in regard to salary scales that I do not think it is necessary for me to go into it again.

Amendment put and the Committee divided:

Ayes —40: Barnett, C.; Basson, J. A. L.; Basson, J. D. du P.; Bennett, C.; Cadman, R. M.; Connan, J. M.; Cronje, F. J. C.; de Kock, H. C.; Dodds, P. R.; Durrant, R. B.; Eden, G. S.; Emdin, S.; Field, A. N.; Gay, L. C.; Graaff, de V.; Henwood, B. H.; Hickman, T.; Higgerty, J. W.; Hourquebie, R. G. L.; Hughes, T. G.; Lewis, H,; Malan, E. G.; Miller, H.; Mitchell, D. E.; Oldfield, G. N.; Radford, A.; Raw, W. V.; Ross, D. G.; Steenkamp, L. S.; Streicher, D. M.; Suzman, H.; Taurog, L. B.; Thompson, J. O. N.; Timoney, H. M.; van der Byl, P.; van Niekerk, S. M.; Waterson, S. F.; Wood, L. F.

Tellers: H. J. Bronkhorst and A. Hopewell.

Noes —69: Bekker, G. F. H.; Bezuidenhout, G. P. C.; Bootha, L. J. C.; Botha, H. J.; Botha, M. C.; Botha, P. W.; Coertze, L. L; Coetzee, B.; Coetzee, P. J.; Cruywagen, W. A.; de Villiers, J. D.; de Wet, J. M.; Diederichs, N.; du Plessis, H. R. H.; Fouché, J. J.; Froneman, G. F. van L.; Greyling, J. C.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Haak, J. F. W.; Henning, J. M.; Hertzog, A.; Hiemstra, E. C. A.; Jonker, A. H.; Jurgens, J. C.; Keyter, H. C. A.; Knobel, G. J.; Kotzé, S. F.; Loots, J. J.; Malan, A. L; Malan, W. C.; Marais, P. S.; Maree, G. de K.; Mostert, D. J. J.; Mulder, C. P.; Muller, H.; Niemand, F. J.; Odell, H. G. O.; Potgieter, J. E.; Rall, J. J.; Rall, J. W.; Sadie, N. C. van R.; Sauer, P. O.; Schlebusch, A. L.; Schlebusch, J. A.; Schoeman, J. C. B.; Schoonbee, J. F.; Smit, H. H.; Swanepoel, J. W. F.; Treurnicht, N. F.; van den Berg, G. P.; van den Berg, M. J.; van den Heever, D. J. G.; van der Ahee, H. H.; van der Spuy, J. P.; van der Wath, J. G. H.; van Niekerk, G. L. H.; van Niekerk, M. C.; van Rensburg, M. C. G. J.; van Zyl, J. J. B.; Verwoerd, H. F.; Visse, J. H.; von Moltke, J. von S.; Vorster, B. J.; Vosloo, A. H.; Waring, F. W.; Webster, A.; Wentzel, J. J.

Tellers: H. J. van Wyk and M. J. de la R. Venter.

Amendment accordingly negatived.

Revenue Vote No. 28.—“Posts, Telegraphs, Telephones and Radio Services”, as printed, put and agreed to.

Loan Vote C.—“Telegraphs, Telephones and Radio Services”, R29,000,000, put and agreed to.

On Revenue Vote No. 29.—“Health”, R26,440,000.

May I ask for the privilege of the half hour, Sir? I find it very difficult indeed to conduct any reasonable discussion with the hon. the Minister. He consequently evades anything on which I question him and he usually accuses me of trying to make political capital whenever I bring forward what I believe and what I know to be reasonable arguments and questions concerning the health of the country. I want to draw attention particularly to the second last episode on 29 January of this year when the hon. the Minister replied to a debate in which the question of bilharzia had been raised. In that debate I suggested to him that he might perhaps think of using electric barriers to deal with bilharzia-carrying snails. I went further and also suggested that radio isotopes could be used. My object in suggesting these things was to try to make the hon. the Minister realize that we were up against a problem with which we had tried to cope by employing the ordinary methods of destroying parasites, we had not been able to solve. I tried to indicate to him that the problem was as far from solution as it was when Lehmann made his great discovery in Egypt in the late months of 1918. We have not got any further. The disease is definitely becoming more virulent in parts of the country and is spreading into new rivers. I indicated to the Minister that new districts were becoming infected and that there was grave danger—this is suggested by others, not by me—that rivers which run into the Atlantic Ocean, and are therefore immune from the disease, would become infected and that the disease threatened the great Orange River scheme. I was trying to make the hon. the Minister understand that new ideas and new approaches must be considered. The hon. the Minister said this—

That was his reaction when a scientific suggestion was put before him. When I pointed out to the Minister that his Department was completely helpless, that it had no research department at all, what did he say to me? He said—

I was seven years out of date! I agree with him that seven years have passed in which little has been done. The inability of his Department—I don’t say their unwillingness—to do anything at all should make him sit back and say to himself: “Was the du Toit Commission right when it decided that the C.S.I.R. should do the research in medicine?” What is the result? The result is that the C.S.I.R. take very little interest in medical research. The whole of medical research is in the hands of one man, I will not say that he is not an excellent choice; nor will I say that he is not competent. He is in both respects but can one man undertake to control the finance of all the medical research of this country? Because that is what is happening and that is what has been happening for some years. One man handles the research of all the medical schools in the country. The medical schools must go cap in hand to the C.S.I.R. when they want funds. What little funds they have of their own they can use independently but apart from that every penny they need for research must come from the C.S.I.R. and that is doled out by one man. Is it then surprising, Sir, that the medical schools of this country can produce no outstanding research. I defy the hon. the Minister to come forward with any outstanding original research which has taken place in our universities during the past seven years. There has been some routine research; there has been some work carried out largely on funds supplied by the Americans. Previously some of those funds was supplied by the Nuffield Foundation in England. There are departments of research in the universities of this country which have told me that without the American support they must close down and the hon. the Minister complains that we are short of doctors. Our best young doctors find the prospect of research without the necessary funds not very attractive. They prefer to work in an environment where they can rely on having funds for more than one year at a time. They are so unhappy that they prefer to go to other countries. As one professor of medicine said to me: “Every time one of my bright young men leaves I shudder and I say to myself I wonder if he will come back’ ”. It is the brain-drain of medicine that is happening because the funds for research are not there. The research workers are not sure whether they will have funds next year to carry on with any project. And the Minister boldly says to me: “We have abdicated from our control of research; we have no interest in the control of research; we don’t care whether research is done.” And his own Department has no funds whatever and is prepared to allow research that the Minister needs for public health purposes to be controlled by somebody else.

I want to turn to another subject and that is the hon. Minister’s policy. In the same debate on 29 January the hon. the Minister said this—

I cannot believe that the head of any Department of Health can have that outlook. I am sure that when the hon. the Minister first took over this post he did not have those ideas because he must have considered his department when he said: “We need some plans”. He therefore appointed a Planning Council. He could not have selected a better chairman and the members were excellently chosen. Having appointed this chairman the Minister did not give him any time to do any planning. The first thing he did—we must remember that this chairman already has a full-time post, so he is only a part-time planner—was to send this hon. gentleman off on a commission to investigate the high cost of medical services. That task took over a year and was excellently performed. Having done that the Minister sent this excellent chairman of his, who was also at the same time looking after his full-time post, to South West Africa to do a large part of the Odendaal Commission report. The tired chairman has now asked for a rest and has taken six months’ leave. In other words, Sir, we are without any plans and have been for a considerable period. No wonder the hon. Minister talks of his Department as an executive department.

Let us look for a moment at the report of the Snyman Commission. That commission investigated fully and made an excellent report, a report with which one can agree in most respects. The hon. the Minister has had this report in his possession at least since early in 1962. if not earlier, and he has also had the author as his adviser. The first opinion given by this commission was the following—

Then it says that the medical provisions of the present Department of Health date back to 1909. Those are the words of his own commission. They go further and say—

They go further—

It goes on—

Then it says—

Lastly—in view of the fact that the Minister is complaining of a shortage of doctors—it says—

It is imperative that the available manpower be utilized economically and in accordance with a well-devised plan.

I have only touched on the fringe but here are very important decisions and recommendations based on very good evidence by the Minister’s own Planning Authority. There are other recommendations but these are the recommendations which cover the country as a whole; recommendations which say to the Minister: If you are going to cut down the cost of medicine, you can cut it down not only through medical care, but you can give better care at the same time, if you will take the trouble to look into this report. What has the Minister done? He has nibbled at a few other little spots. He has opened up the mental hospitals so that they can have out-patients! He has made no real effort to provide that service which I have twice asked him to provide, namely, a service between the hospital gates and the home. That service will keep people out of hospital. One day less of each patient in hospital will save this country millions of rand. The hon. the Minister has made no effort to implement what this commission has recommended, namely, an interlinked hospital service; a modern service working economically, a modern service in which there is no overlapping, a modern service in which every unit is used usefully and not allowed to do work which others are also doing. Let us look at the evidence given by the Minister’s own Department. His own Department said this—

Those are the words of the Department of Health. What did the South African Nursing Association say? It said—

What did the Nursing Council say? They said—

The Transvaal Hospital Department said the following—

I do not need to say more. I have shown to you, Sir, and to the Committee that the advice is there. It has been in the hands of the hon. the Minister for three years at least. Has he done anything to improve the position in general, over a wide field of health? It is no use nibbling here and there. Has he listened to his own Planning Council? Has he listened to the Chairman of his Planning Council? No, Sir, there is no evidence that he has, and I shall be very pleased to hear anything he may have to offer in reply.

The hon. member for Durban Central (Dr. Radford) raised an important aspect of medicine. I want to agree with him in one respect and that is that we could perhaps spend more on research. I differ from him in this respect—that he wants large sums of money to be given to every university and that each should do research in his own way. I do not think that our country would be able to afford this. In my opinion it would be better to canalize the funds in one direction so that sufficient funds would then be available to enable research to be done by perhaps one or two undertakings. There is, for example, research in connection with bilharzia. In my opinion this has been canalized by the hon. the Minister in the right way—to the C.S.I.R. I think that that sort of research ought to be done by the C.S.I.R. I am not now in a position to judge whether the funds or the facilities which are made available are adequate although I think that we could perhaps do a little more in that direction. I know, for example, that a department for open-heart surgery was set up in the Groote Schuur Hospital and I know for a fact that when additional facilities were required, and I had been approached in this connection and I in my turn had approached the hon. the Minister and the other authorities, these facilities were made available, and it is acknowledged by the world to-day that the research which is being done at the Groote Schuur Hospital is among the best in the world. Some of the inventions which have resulted from this research, for example, the heart valves, are being used throughout the world. We cannot therefore accuse the Government of doing nothing in the sphere of research. Whether or not we can do more is another matter. I should like us to make additional funds available to various bodies, to the C.S.I.R. and to one or more of the larger universities, for the purpose of further investigation into and research in connection with practical surgery and medicine. The hon. member also quoted from the Snyman Report regarding the three different levels of medical services which are rendered and the overlapping which takes place in this regard. We have known this for some time. Mention of this fact in the Snyman Report is not the first time this state of affairs has come to our notice. I also want to congratulate the hon. the Minister for having established a planning board with a capable chairman like Prof. Snyman. I think that the time has come for Prof. Snyman to be asked to go into this matter as well. We find that the State and the local authorities play a role in preventive medicine and there is a great deal of overlapping. I think that there is a great wastage of manpower in this regard in that these people sit and look at one another and pass the buck from one to the other. We can to a large extent make better use of the professional manpower we have if it is placed under one authority. We find too in healing medicine that some of the hospitals fall under the State and others under the provinces. In my opinion this is also a very unsound state of affairs. There are also the private doctors who have to play their part in connection with caring for patients. I personally feel that the hon. the Minister should try as far as possible to eliminate this overlapping.

There is another matter in connection with which I should like to take the hon. member for Durban Central to task and that is that he is a member of the South African Medical Council, a body which is responsible for the curricula which are drawn up for the training of doctors. I was pleased to read in the Press a few days ago that the various medical schools will from 1967 or 1968 be able to turn out about 50 per cent more doctors than is at present the case. But the whole problem does not end there. I feel that we should start at the beginning, with the first-year students. Is there a shortage of first-year students who enrol for training in medicine? I say there is not. There is I am sure an adequate number of young and capable men who enrol annually for training in medicine. We find, for example, that from 300 to 400 students enrol for the first year medical course at Pretoria University, about 120 at the University of Stellenbosch, between 200 and 300 at Cape Town University and about the same number at the University of the Witwatersrand. But we find that a dogmatic line is drawn at the end of the first year because for the second year they can only take about 80 or 90 students at Pretoria, about 80 or 90 in Johannesburg, about the same number at Cape Town and about 40 at Stellenbosch, and all the other first-year students are failed. In many cases scholars who passed their matriculation examination with distinction in the first class are eliminated. If they have their full complement, the rest are failed and this means that a year in the lives of all those young people has been wasted. I want to suggest that the South African Medical Council review the first-year medical course and place it more on a general science basis so that the students who do pass can also follow other directions. The medical schools can then screen the successful candidates and select from those who have passed only those whom they can cope with during the second yeai and those who remain can then work for a science degree. They will then not be wasting a year’s study. Parents’ money is wasted by failing so many students at the end of the first year; a young man may possibly not have another opportunity to attend university and his services will be lost to the country. But if the course is re-orientated, that young man can take a B.Sc. course and may even be able to go in for medicine at a later stage again if he wants to, or else he can concentrate upon a scientific career. I hope that the South African Medical Council will investigate this matter, if the hon. the Minister can contribute anything in this direction I shall be very grateful because I am convinced that under the present system hundreds of our young men are eliminated and are deprived of the privilege of enjoying a university education.

Both the previous speakers have referred to the question of bilharzia, and I would like to deal with it a little more in detail. Earlier in this Session a motion was discussed dealing with this subject, and the Minister said at the time, when he was talking about the Orange River, that fortunately parasites have as yet not been found present there and that research teams have been sent to all sections of the Orange River. A little while after that, the C.S.I.R. published its report for the year 1963-4 and in that report the opinion was expressed that recent investigations have shown that bilharzia-carrying snails had appeared in the Vaal River basin and also in the Orange River catchment area at Kuruman. It would seem that the problem to which the Minister referred has become one of a much more urgent nature, and I want to deal with the urgency with which the C.S.I.R. views the question of bilharzia. They say this—

And then the report concludes that particular section by saying “that the need for renewed chemical research is becoming urgent”. Well, Sir, the Minister admitted that the eradication of bilharzia was an infinitely difficult task. My information is that the approach to this subject at the moment is inadequate in view of the urgency, and I propose to suggest some constructive criticism by virtue of information which has come into my possession from a source which I consider to be extremely reliable.

Firstly in connection with the attitude of the State to bilharzia, it seems as if the State regards the treatment of bilharzia as an individual matter and that it should be treated clinically only when symptoms begin to worry the individual. This is entirely different from the authoritative opinion of Dr. Gear and his colleagues Craib and Gelfand. They advocate an early routine and a mass treatment.

Now, something which is very important and which was dealt with in the motion earlier, is the question of propaganda. My information is that the State is behind the times, that the propaganda which the State puts out is inadequate, and in some cases almost nonexistent. I am told that there is a badly made film which is not suitable for showing in commercial cinemas, and that it is only suitable for Whites. Sir, 80 per cent to 90 per cent of the infected people are non-Whites. So the propaganda must surely be directed to them. Then I believe there is a pamphlet in some post offices, but it is not a very dramatic one and it certainly does not make much appeal to the illiterate. When we come to compare that with what private commercial pharmaceutical firms are putting out in the way of propaganda, I think the Government could take a leaf out of their book. I am sure the hon. Minister is aware of the type of propaganda that is being published, something that is graphic, something that would indicate immediately to a person who is not able to read, that there is something very serious as far as bilharzia is concerned. I suggest to the hon. the Minister that the time has come when propaganda methods should be modernized and improved.

There is a third point in connection with control. I am told that there was a small amount of mollusciciding done in the Transvaal and that that has now been completely stopped. I am told that there are no adequate attempts to enforce sanitation practices, latrines, drinking water, bathing, etc., neither in the reserves, nor on the farms in the White areas. As far as the treatment is concerned, I am told, that in the Bantu areas it is limited to a small number of Bantu patients reporting primarily at mission hospitals, that the existing treatment drugs are in small supply, and that difficulties in obtaining refunds for these hospitals from the authorities are experienced. As far as Whites are concerned, Sir, it seems as if the treatment is protracted. Whites are only treated where treatment is absolutely necessary, and when they know they have the disease. They can resort to their own private medical practitioners if they wish, but the State as such has no mass satisfactory form of treatment.

A further point is the question of research. I am told that it is carried on in scattered units on a part-time basis, except the C.S.I.R. unit at Nelspruit, and there only one medical officer operates. I am told, and the report of the C.S.I.R. confirms it, that there is some activity at Onderstepoort, Stellenbosch, Rhodes and the S.A.I.M.R. But I do believe that a separate organization for bilharzia is needed to deal with it in an urgent manner on the basis of the approach adopted to tuberculosis and malaria.

When we come to finance, the hon. member for Geduld indicated that perhaps a little more money should be made available for research. I believe that the amount made available is inadequate. I found it difficult to get a general picture, because I realize that the responsibility for the treatment of bilharzia in many cases rests on the provinces, but in the Estimates this year, we find an amount of R24,000 has been set aside. That amount has remained static for three years, it is an amount which has been granted to the Transvaal Administration as a subsidy. Just compare the amount of money made available for malaria: The average amount over the last three years has been R 138,000 each year, and in the case of tuberculosis, the amount there was R 12.866,000 which has now been stepped up to R 13,250,000. The amount for venereal disease is R 185,000 for the year. I appreciate that this question of the implementation of the treatment is in the hands of the provinces, but I have not been able to find out in the provincial budgets exactly to what extent the provinces contribute to the expenses in regard to bilharzia treatment. I wonder if the Minister could give us some details so that we can get a picture of what is being attempted in this regard. I believe that the present inadequate expenditure is not dealing with the endemic problem as it should, and the whole problem is not receiving sufficient attention. I believe, too, that the State must recognize that bilharzia is a social disease. In a recent publication made available to the medical and allied professions, I see banner headlines: “G.P.s want bilharzia notifiable. A national menace.” The article says that with 3,000,000 people in South Africa said to be suffering from bilharzia, a number of doctors are pressing for this disease to be made notifiable on the ground that it has become a national menace and that almost all water in Natal and the Transvaal could be infected. The article goes on and is even pessimistic about the advisability of our intrepid canoeists using the rivers in South Africa, because they feel that it is a source of infection to young men who might become immersed in the water. It also goes on and points out that in a lake which had been certified bilharzia-free in a spot very near to Durban, young sea scouts used to go and practise their rowing and their sailing, and as a result of their practising in this certified free area, all of them, or a large number of them contracted bilharzia. I appeal to the hon. Minister to give instructions to his Department that a more dynamic and more practical effort should be made in the fight that lies before us against this dreadful disease.

Somebody said once that the test of the civilization of a nation was the extent to which it looked after its unfortunates, the mentally and physically disabled in the community. Measured by those standards the Republic of South Africa has already progressed a long way up the ladder of civilization. The care of these unfortunates, and particularly disabled children, always starts with charitable organizations. The pattern is usually that the parents of an unfortunate child of this nature start organizing the care of the child on a communal basis after which the Church takes over. Eventually the State takes full responsibility for the care of these unfortunate children. Because of this fact, we have our wonderful institutions for the deaf and the blind, for example, the school for the blind and the deaf at Worcester. There is another very fine example of this in the school for epileptics at Kuils River. The State is at the moment also investigating the question of the care of our mentally deficient children.

I want to-day to draw the attention of the hon. the Minister to a very unfortunate group in society, a group which is as yet not receiving the necessary attention and care. I am referring to one of the most unfortunate groups of these incapacitated or abnormal members of society, namely, the cerebral palsied. Cerebral palsy is a condition which results from an injury before birth, at birth or after birth—a brain injury. It occurs in many different degrees but the most extreme cases are pathetic to see. This is one of the greatest crosses which any parent is called upon to bear, particularly the mother of such a child. Such a child can do nothing for himself; everything has to be done for him. The older the child becomes the more difficult it is for the parent to handle that child and the greater and more intolerable the burden upon such parent becomes. Provision is already being made for the less serious cases because there are schools in which the less serious cases can be taught but virtually nothing is as yet being done for the extreme cases. The same pattern has unfolded in this regard as in the case of other unfortunate children, as in the case of blindness and deafness and epilepsy. There were a few of these children in Paarl a few years ago and the parents of those children started organizing in order to have these poor unfortunate children cared for on a communal basis. At a later stage the D.R. Church assisted with the organization and the collection of funds. Never before, I am sure, has the public co-operated with so much spontaneous enthusiasm in regard to the collection of funds for an institution where these poor unfortunate children can be cared for. For example, a farmer made ten morgen of land available for the building of an institution; another person donated a house which was sold. A large amount of money was collected by this means. Seldom has a charitable effort attracted so much spontaneous support and no wonder because to see such children in their misfortune is enough to soften the hardest heart. But the expense connected with such an institution will be very, very high. Because of the helplessness of these children practically each one of them requires a nurse. That is why I want to make an earnest appeal to the hon. the Minister this afternoon that the State should start by taking responsibility for the care of these poor unfortunate children. I do not want to say that voluntary efforts should be excluded completely because this voluntary action in the care of these unfortunate children has a civilizing effect, and elevating effect upon the community and we do not want to forfeit this effect for anything in the world. That is why I do not want to ask that all voluntary activity should be taken over by the State. But I certainly do want to ask that the State should make a very, very generous contribution to such an institution where these extremely unfortunate children will be cared for. I hope that the hon. the Minister will announce immediately that the State will accept full responsibility in this regard.

I would like to draw the hon. Minister’s attention to the great work being done in South Africa by the National Cancer Association. In broad terms I believe it is generally understood that in health matters the Government takes responsibility for preventive work in the matter of health and that the provinces take the responsibility for treatment of cancer. The Cancer Association, however, covers both spheres and functions in cooperation with the Health Department of both the Government and the provinces.

Among the spheres of its operations are cancer research, dissemination of information to the medical and allied professions, education of the public and assistance rendered to cancer patients. From the latest annual report of the president of the Cancer Association of South Africa, I would like to read just one paragraph—

As a result of a great amount of work and expense that the association has undertaken, 18 delegates from South Africa attended the Eighth International Cancer Congress in Moscow recently, which was representative of 62 countries. The primary purpose of the congress was the exchange of information amongst scientists throughout the world engaged in cancer research.

The association is receiving wholehearted and friendly co-operation from the American and Canadian societies, the Marie Curie Memorial Foundation, the British Empire Cancer Campaign, the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, the Central Council for Health Education of Great Britain and “De Landelijke Organisatie voor de Kankerbestrijding” of the Netherlands.

The South African Cancer Bulletin is supplied without charge to the medical profession of South Africa and the final year medical students at the universities. Research workers from various parts of Europe and the United States of America have requested reprints of papers published in the bulletin.

The expenditure by the association on cancer patients and their relatives in the past year alone amounted to R 13,867. A cottage at Langa was furnished and equipped, to house, feed and care for Bantu out-patients from rural areas receiving treatment at provincial hospitals. Many people do not realize that a large number of cancer cases are treated as out-patients. These people come in from the country and have nowhere to stay. The Cancer Association is doing its best to provide for those people, and they have built this cottage at Langa for Bantu and they are busy with a proposition on a similar basis for the Coloured people in these parts. R46,198 was spent in the past year alone on public education. The association can justifiably claim that their efforts and their expenditure have produced substantial results.

Although the death rate from lung cancer continues to rise very steeply, the death rate from all other forms of cancer is now showing a downward trend. With more funds available, for the work of the Cancer Association, one can assume that still greater improvement would be made in this downward trend.

According to the Revenue and Expenditure Account, the association spent in 1963, a total amount of R248,039, all of which was derived from public contributions, with the exception of R200 contributed by this Government. I think these figures are revealing. Here I would again quote from the president’s annual report. He writes—

Personally I feel that I need not take the matter further than to say that I feel sure that every member of this House would feel that the Government was not over-spending if to a cause like this the Government contributed R-for-R to the amounts contributed by the public, but we find that the amount actually contributed by the Government is in the order of R1 to every R 1,000 contributed by the public. I trust the hon. Minister will give this matter his serious attention.

Both the hon. members for Paarl (Mr. W. C. Malan) and East London (North) (Mr. Field) touched upon some very important aspects of medicine. I want to associate myself with the hon. member for Paarl in his plea on behalf of cerebral palsied children, but for many years now it has been endeavoured to provide sufficient accommodation for the feeble-minded children, the morons and those who cannot be accommodated in the homes, and we do not even have sufficient accommodation for them yet. I am also asking that more provision should be made for children of that nature. I know it is a tremendous burden on the Government. It is not always that the Government is unwilling to make available funds to make provision for those children, but serious difficulties are experienced as far as the provision of nursing care for these people is concerned, because the staff for manning these homes is simply not available. I therefore think that the hon. member for Paarl should exercise a little patience, because we still have a large backlog as regards the provision of housing for these feebleminded persons, and it will be difficult and will take quite some time to provide homes for those suffering from cerebral palsy, who require even more care.

The hon. member for East London (North) spoke about cancer research and what the Government can still do to assist that research. I just want to point out that a great deal of cancer research is being done at the Medical School of the University of Pretoria. In that regard the Government is doing its duty and is making funds available, and important work is being done. But where the Minister instituted an extensive propaganda campaign for vaccination against poliomyelitis, he himself has had experience of how, by means of that propaganda, we persuaded the people of South Africa to have their children vaccinated against poliomyelitis, and as in the case of smallpox, poliomyelitis has now almost become a disease of the past. I think we must also try to stamp out diphtheria in this way. Will it not perhaps be possible to make propaganda for the B.C.G. injections against tuberculosis, and cannot we make the injections against enteric fever more popular with the public? By doing that we can endeavour to eliminate those diseases, which are preventable. We cannot eliminate cancer in that way, but we can make a little more propaganda amongst the public to see whether we can induce people to seek medical assistance at an early stage so that cancer can be diagnosed before it has reached an advanced stage. If cancer is diagnosed at an early stage, there is some hope of curing the patients by means of surgery or radiotherapy. I feel that the Department and the Minister might perhaps pay a little more attention to making pronaganda of this nature, so that these aspects could be brought to the notice of the public more. Private medical practitioners cannot do that, because it would amount to advertising, but the Minister can do it by making use of the services of the Government medical officers and his propaganda machine, and through the agency of the medical officers of health of the towns and cities as well. They can give lectures and encourage people to come for injections, or to have themselves examined to see whether or not they are suffering from cancer. That would be of great value to the country. I would therefore be glad if the Minister would agree to launch such a propaganda campaign.

During the last few sessions there had been a continuous outcry against the low pay and the long hours of work and the difficult conditions of service of the nursing profession. Anyone concerned with hospitals has been very concerned with the shortage of qualified nursing staff throughout the Republic. We have discussed this question on numerous occasions and those of us who felt very strongly on the point were glad that during the recess an increase in salary was granted to the nurses, but as usual it was too little and much too late. It was so little that I do not think it will stop the spate of resignations that continues in the nursing profession. I know what the Minister’s reply will be, that he has appointed a commission once again to go into the question of salaries and conditions of service, but once again I think it is one way of begging the question and hiding behind the investigations which will be carried on over many months, and there will not be any result coming from that investigation for a long time to come, but in the meantime there will be a deterioration in the services available to those who need them throughout the country. I appeal to the Minister to take this matter seriously and to make improvements. In answer to questions I put on the Order Paper, the Minister for Agricultural Technical Services stated that even the Bantu labourers on the Government experimental farms and colleges are on a five-day week and get double pay on Sundays, but that does not apply to the nursing staff. They are expected to work much longer hours than any agricultural labourer and it is time these people got their just dues.

In view of the fact that there is that commission sitting and that evidence will be given on these points there, we will do our best to impress on the Minister through that commission that there must not be a delay. I would appeal to the Minister now not to wait for that full report before going through a complete rehabilitation, you might say. of the nursing services as far as salaries are concerned. He should institute a realistic salary system now and then overhaul it completely when he gets the full report.

I am samewhat surprised at what the hon. member who has just sat down has said because he must know that the investigation into nursing was divided into two sections. The first section was in connection with salaries and the other in connection with working conditions and other problems. The hon. member will remember that the Public Service Commission asked that the first aspect be thoroughly investigated. It was finalized within a couple of months and the salaries were increased, so much so, that many of the provinces said they had been increased beyond expectation. The salaries of nurses have, therefore, already been thoroughly gone into. At the moment the Commission of Inquiry is investigating other conditions and problems.

The hon. member for East London (City) (Mr. Field) referred to the very important work which the Cancer Research Institute of South Africa did. We all admit and appreciate that.

The important thing is to give people timeous warning and remarkable work has already been done. There is no question of the work not being appreciated but we shall most assuredly attend to the problem of possibly making a greater contribution to that institute from the funds at our disposal.

The hon. member for Paarl (Mr. W. C. Malan) has raised a matter which is very dear to all of us and that is the position of those unfortunate children who suffer from cerebral palsy. I think the hon. member can rest assured that there is not a person who does not sympathize with those people, particularly with their families. Those who suffer from cerebral palsy can be divided into two classes. The first class consist of those who are educable and the second class of those who are not. Those who are educable fall under the Department of Education. Arts and Science which makes provision for their education but that Department is naturally not responsible to look after them later in their lives. As far as the mentally deficient are concerned they have access to our hospitals. There are various hospitals for them, such as Alexandra, Witrand and Howick. But there is a growing need to provide for the mentally deficient children because of the fact that parents are gradually adopting a new approach. In the past the approach of parents has been that they were partly to blame. It has taken us years to educate them. Fortunately the parents of those children are more and more beginning to realize that it is in the interest of the child itself to be amongst his own kind; that the child is happier at school than in his own home. He is not happy among normal children who may perhaps hurt his feelings; he is conscious of the fact that he is unlike them. Parents have gradually begun to realize that if they put such a child in a school where he is amongst children who are like him, children with the same defects, he is happy. It is difficult for parents, however, to understand that such a child is practically more attached to his friends at school than to his own home. For that reason they do no want to give up the child. Such families have to be educated, they must learn to be willing to give up that child to the school so that provision can also be made for him in the years to come when his parents are perhaps no longer there. Because parents were disinclined in the past to give up such children the State did not do everything it wanted to do but now that this new approach is beginning to take root we have gone so far as to appoint a commission of inquiry to see what provision should be made for such children while they are at school and in later vears when their parents are no longer there. In that case there must be some place where they can be looked after. I hope that when the findings are available in the near future it will be possible for the State to take active steps. I want to point out that the State has already decided to erect a big institution at Bloemfontein which will cost something like R 1,000,000 and there will be accommodation for 500 such children. But we realize, of course, that because of the new approach on the part of the public, that accommodation will probably not be sufficient and that it may be necessary to erect such institutions at various other places. I can assure the hon. member that as soon as we have that report we shall give very careful consideration to its findings.

I want to compliment the hon. member for Durban (Berea) (Mr. Wood) on the delicate way in which he has approached the problem which are before us. I want to assure him that when hon. members approach something in a reasonable manner one cannot but react in a reasonable manner. I am sorry if I hurt the feelings of the hon. member for Durban (Central) (Dr. Radford) in a previous debate; perhaps it was because of a different approach. I am pleased, however, that the hon. member has approached the problems in a reasonable way to-day and I want to assure him that we all agree with him in many respects. We realize that the ideal position, as far as research is concerned, is that everybody who is interested in something should be able to do research in that direction. After all you make a success of that thing in which you are really interested. We know there are people at the universities and in the hospitals who are interested in something or other. The ideal position would be to assist them to do research in that direction, even if they do so on their own, but unfortunately we must also look at the matter from the practical point of view, namely, the enormous sums of money that research demands. That was why the Government deemed it necessary to appoint a commission of inquiry to determine what would be the best way in which to promote research in South Africa. The Government appointed the Du Toit Commission which found, not from the idealistic point of view, but from the practical point of view, that it was essential to centralize research as much as possible in one body, namely, the C.S.I.R. I do not think the hon. member is quite right when he says that all the research is done by one man. It centres round a committee of 12 prominent members and they decide from time to time, depending on the available funds, which is the most important problems which call for research. We must remember that South Africa is a country of problems, of all kinds of problems, including medical problems. It is essential that, where a great amount of money is demanded from the State for research, that money be canalized so that it can meet the various needs. The hon. member must not be pessimistic because research is taking place everywhere to-day. Take the Department of Health for example. I want to mention bilharzia to namely, the C.S.I.R. I do not think the hon. which the hon. member has referred. Our own Department is at the moment doing research work in regard to the chemical control of snails, a method which is perhaps not as expensive and which may perhaps not require such huge funds but it is an aspect which is of the utmost importance. I cannot say much about the results at this stage but it would appear that the projects on which they are engaged at the moment are holding out big promise.

The hon. member for Durban (Berea) was of opinion that we were not giving enough attention to bilharzia. I can assure him that that is not the case; we are not under-estimating it. We appreciate what it means but the difficulty is how to control it. One of the methods of combating bilharzia is to cure the human being who has that parasite. At the moment the most effective method is antimony preparations which are very unpleasnt to take and that method involves a course of ten to 15 treatments. We know that if a person has had one or two treatments which he has not found pleasant he does not return for the others. In addition most of the people who suffer from bilharzia are the Bantu in the northern and eastern Transvaal. They are very primitive people and do not appreciate the dangers of bilharzia, because it would appear that bilharzia has not quite the same effect on the Bantu which it has on a White person. They do not regard it as a serious disease. When you try to persuade them or exert pressure on them to undergo treatment they say: “White man, you are only worrying us”. He sees no reason why he should undergo a course of treatment which is unpleasant. We shall only make some progress when something is discovered which is not unpleasant to take and to discover that calls for a great amount of research. I think the hon. member will agree with me that research to discover that cure does not form part of the ordinary activities of our Department, particularly not while there are big companies conducting research into the combating of bilharzia. The hon. member will admit that you require expert chemists and pharmacists to do the research into such a matter and I think he will agree that that is not the duty of my Department. That brings me to the next problem. In order to overcome bilharzia completely it is essential to see to it that the sick person does not infect the snail. That means that the excreta of the human being should not reach the snail. That is not a problem of research but a problem of education because the Bantu on the platteland does not use lavatories; he refuses to use them. He usually uses the veld. It is a tremendous problem to train the masses in those areas.

Another method is to keep the human being away from the water so that the snail cannot infect him. Here again I think the hon. member will admit that it is an impossible task to persuade thousands of Bantu to keep away from the water. We seem, therefore, to be facing a hopeless position from that angle as well. The fourth method is to exterminate the snails, but the snail is a very low form of life with the result that the poisons are inclined to kill the highest forms of life in the water before they kill the snail. It is simply impossible to combat the snails with the ordinary insecticides at our disposal. Where the hon. member talks about research, therefore, we agree with him, but the only difficulty is money. Research with a view to discovering new methods to combat bilharzia falls outside our purview. I also want to point out to the hon. member that this committee which is doing research in connection with bilharzia is doing valuable work at the medical institute, at Nelspruit, Potchefstroom and various other places, but it is work which has not yet produced the end results we want. Perhaps it would please the hon. member to know that an institution like the World Health Organization probably turns to South Africa more than to any other country when it comes to research in regard to bilharzia. Some of our experts have already been asked by the W.H.O. to visit other countries where bilharzia is rife, to advise them how to combat it more effectively.

I think there is one further point to which I must reply and that is the point made by the hon. member for Geduld (Dr. Jurgens), namely, that more propaganda should be made to combat diphtheria and gastric fever. Our difficulty, as far as gastric fever is concerned, is very often precisely the Bantu. It is an endless task to educate the Bantu, particularly as far as this illness is concerned. The Department is already making propaganda on a very large scale amongst the Bantu; it is making propaganda in the schools; films are shown in the Bantu schools; there are “fairs” at these new institutions where the Bantu congregate; they are somewhere between a show and a fête. The Department has, therefore, tried in all sorts of ways to make propaganda amongst the Bantu to combat disease. I want to assure the hon. member that we shall give serious consideration to the views expressed by him and that we are at the moment already doing a great deal in the direction he has suggested.

If we look at the Health Vote we find that no less than R26,000.000 is going to be spent under that Vote this year, but the question does occur to us whether this amount of money is being spent to the best advantage of all the inhabitants of our country. We find that there are various refunds to be made to the local authorities by the Central Government. Upon examining the matter further we find that contributions for promoting the health of our people are being made on the various levels of our system of government, on the Central Government level, on the provincial level and on the level of the local authorities, and if one analyses the matter properly one finally comes to the conclusion that there is some overlapping on the various levels as far as health services are concerned. One wonders whether the time has not arrived for a thorough investigation to be instituted with a view to ensuring that the money which is made available by the Central Government and the provincial authorities is in fact utilized in the most effective way. Let us consider what really happens in the case of a local authority. We find that the Central Government has its district surgeon in the municipal area; the local authority gets a subsidy from the Government and it has its own health services which it has to maintain. Now, what is the position as far as our aged are concerned? Our aged, provided they draw a pension, are the responsibility of the district surgeons. If these old people become ill at night they have to get an order from the chief magistrate of the municipal area if they want the district surgeon to visit them. If they do not get such an order from the magistrate the district surgeon cannot visit them. We know that the magistrate’s offices close at half-past four in the afternoon . . .

And are also closed on Saturdays.

Yes, they are closed on Saturdays and Sundays and on public holidays. I want to ask the hon. the Minister whether the time has not arrived to effect improvements to that system in order to assist our aged in particular. Sir, we know under what difficult circumstances the district surgeons are working in the various cities. I am convinced that the time will come when we shall not get medical practitioners to apply for these posts. There are 397 part-time posts at the moment, and our problem will be to find doctors to accept those positions. The people are not prepared to work for the remuneration we are offering them. It is a difficult and also a very unpleasant task to be the district surgeon of a town. There are few doctors to-day who are prepared to apply for those posts. I have already said that the various local authorities maintain their own health services; they have their own doctors, but the poor aged person who is a pensioner cannot make use of the health services provided by the local authority. because those services are subsidized in a different way. I want to plead with the hon. the Minister this afternoon that we should try to co-ordinate these various services. One usually finds that the health services and clinics of the local authorities are situated in the centre of town. I want to submit to the Minister for his consideration that we should try to ensure that it will not be necessary for old people who are ill and worn with age to visit the provincial hospitals for treatment, nor to go to the district surgeons for treatment, but that they should be enabled to receive treatment at the health clinics of the local authorities. If we can achieve that, these services will be reasonably accessible to the aged, and there will always be a doctor on duty to give them assistance and advice. My plea this after noon is therefore that a proper investigation should be instituted into the various health services provided by various bodies in the Republic. Although we are providing many excellent services on the various levels to-day, I am convinced that we shall be able to provide even better services if better co-ordination can be brought about between the Central Government, the provincial authorities and the local authorities and if the overlapping existing to-day can be eliminated.

Then there is a further plea which I want to submit to the hon. the Minister. We are proud of the services which are being rendered in the field of mental health in the Republic to-day. We know that there are still many people locked up in our gaols who suffer from some form of mental derangement; we know that those people cannot be accommodated in the various existing institutions as those institutions are all filled to capacity. We know that at certain places on the Witwatersrand where the mines are about to close down, certain mining compounds are being converted into institutions in which mentally deranged persons can be accommodated and can receive treatment. At Randfontein we already have a large institution which has been equipped for this purpose and which is doing a great deal to provide proper nursing care for mentally deranged persons who were previously accommodated in various gaols in the country. We know that if those people can receive proper treatment, particularly with the aid of this new remedy which has come onto the market, they can be cured much more quickly. I want to ask the hon. the Minister whether the time has not arrived to introduce the same service on the East Rand for providing treatment to those people, particularly since several large mining compounds will soon become vacant and are to be demolished. [Time limit.]

I notice that an amount of R135,000 has been provided for the W.H.O. under this Vote. I think I may say that the benefits we have received from the W.H.O. to date cannot be compared with the services we have rendered. In the field of medicine we are probably the leading country in Africa, particularly as regards tropical diseases and diseases occurring in African territories. It is the African countries more than any other which derive tremendous benefit from the research carried out in our institutes and from vaccines which are prepared by us and supplied to fellow-members of the W.H.O. We find that a new anti-South African movement has now been launched in the W.H.O. and that a resolution has been passed which enables the African countries to expel us from that body. I want to ask the hon. the Minister whether it is necessary for us to wait for those people to expel the Republic of South Africa from the W.H.O. for ideological reasons or on political grounds, in spite of the very good services we are providing to the African countries. Should we wait until we are expelled, or should we rather add the R 135,000 we are contributing to the costs of the W.H.O. this year to other funds and use that money to provide services directly to African countries which ask for and require such services? I want to suggest that we should not wait until we are expelled, but should simply withdraw and then provide the required services to those people in our own way.

There is another matter which I want to raise under the hon. the Minister’s Vote this afternoon, and that is the question of part-time district surgeons. I want to pay tribute to the excellent services rendered by the district surgeons, particularly to the less well-to-do population groups of our country. These district surgeons are people who make tremendous sacrifices in rendering these services at virtually a nominal remuneration. They are frequently called out in the middle of the night. I am referring particularly to the part-time district surgeons in the rural areas whom I know about. These people are rendering excellent services and are making tremendous sacrifices on behalf of the underprivileged patients they have to attend to. I want to make an appeal to employers through the Minister. There are many employers in the rural areas who make the right use of the services of these part-time district surgeons and who only avail themselves of these services if it is absolutely necessary to do so. But we nevertheless find that those services are frequently abused. These part-time district surgeons are called in to attend to the slightest indispositions; sometimes they are even expected to drive out to farms over considerable distances, at Government expense, to treat a cold or some such indisposition suffered by an employee. It is public money which is literally being wasted in that way. Not only money is being wasted in that way, but also the precious time of those district surgeons. I want to express the hope that, where it does not always occur to people that they are rendering a disservice to others in that way, they will keep that fact in mind, because those part-time district surgeons have to make great sacrifices in rendering those services.

In February this year the hon. the Minister announced in this House that his Department had decided to establish an institution for mentally deficient persons in Bloemfontein. As the hon. the Minister knows, the City Council of Bloemfontein was so kind as to donate 50 morgen of land to the State for that purpose. The land is very well situated, is an extremely suitable place for the purpose, and lies on the northern side of the city. The city council donated the land unconditionally, on the understanding, of course, that it would be used for the erection of an institution for mentally deficient persons and also for the purpose of making provision for the education of mentally retarded children, children who have up to now been educated at the Lettie Fouche School in Bloemfontein. We are of course grateful to the City Council of Bloemfontein for their generous action, and we owe a similar debt of gratitude to the Minister and his Department for the sympathetic consideration which they have given to this whole matter. We are particularly grateful for the fact that the hon. the Minister has decided, and that it has already been announced, that an institution for this purpose will be erected in Bloemfontein.

We can appreciate that the negotiations only took place and the decisions were only taken at the end of 1964, and that it was only then that finality was reached in the matter, and that as a result the planning is still in the initial stage. However, I do want to plead with the Minister that this matter should be expedited, that it should get preferential treatment and that it should be placed high up on the priority list of his Department. It is an urgent matter; it is a pressing need which has to be met; it is a need in respect of a group of people in our community to whom we more than owe it to care for them, and in respect of which we have to a large extent neglected our duty in the past.

I do not think it is necessary for me to bring this urgent need to the Minister’s notice once again. I think the Minister is as convinced of its urgency as I am. It is perhaps sufficient to say that the fact that there is no institution of this nature in the Free State and the Northern Cape, in the whole of that vast area, emphasizes the necessity of and the urgent need for such an institution. But the urgency of the matter is also confirmed by the fact that the Lettie Fouche School has become hopelessly too small to accommodate all the pupils in respect of whom admission is applied for. Added to that there is the fact, Mr. Chairman, that the education of mentally retarded children with an I.Q. of between 20 and 50 has become an increasingly urgent need, a need for which the State has not made proper provision as yet.

I therefore want to ask the Minister what progress has been made with the preliminary arrangements for the establishment of this institution and whether the Minister can give us the assurance that everything possible will be done to expedite the matter; whether it is a matter which will receive preferential treatment from his Department, and whether the co-operation of all the Departments concerned in the erection of the building can be obtained in order to have this institution erected as soon as possible.

I should like to ask the Minister what progress has been made in carrying out an investigation in connection with the contamination of our stock of cattle and of pigs by the tape-worm which is found in man. I have taken up this matter with the Department of Health, with the Department of Agricultural Technical Services and with the Department of Bantu Administration and Development as well. I want to ask the hon. the Minister to see to it that his Department takes more positive action in this connection and will provide guidance in combating contamination of human beings, the carriers of the tapeworm. The farming community of South Africa suffers considerable losses as a result of the contamination of their cattle and pigs by measles. Man is the carrier of the tape-worm, which is approximately 16 feet in length. The tape-worm is divided into segments, and each of those segments contains approximately 50,000 to 100,000 eggs. There are various kinds of measles; the kind found in pigs is not the same as that found in cattle. Man, who is the carrier of the tape-worm, spreads the eggs. In other words, man spreads the contamination generally wherever he goes. A person who is the carrier of a tape-worm can contaminate a farmer’s entire farm with measles, and that will lead to heavy losses being suffered:

As I am saying, the matter is closely connected with the Department of Agricultural Technical Services and with the Department of Bantu Administration too, but because the matter does in fact concern three Departments, I also want to mention it under the Department of Health. In the interests of our farming community I am asking that positive steps should be taken to combat the tape-worm found in humans. Mr. Chairman, you may perhaps think that measles is something which only occurs in the Bantu areas or in the Northern Transvaal, but that is not the case at all. Cattle which are contaminated with measles are found throughout the Republic of South Africa. Even here in Cape Town many of the cattle which are slaughtered have measles. In 1961 3 per cent of the cattle were held back because of measles. In 1962-3 the figure was 3.4 per cent. The position as far as the farmer is concerned is briefly as follows: The health inspector makes certain cuts in the carcase and if he finds fewer than 9 measles the carcase is allowed to be kept frozen at a certain temperature for a fortnight, and after it has been kept frozen in that way, the meat is again fit for human consumption. But although it can then be sold, it has usually decreased in value. That type of meat is usually used in compounds and so forth:

In 1961-2, in Cape Town alone, 1,120 beef carcases were held back because of measles. The value of those carcases was nearly R13,000. On the Witwatersrand the figure for the same year was nearly 17,000 carcases, with a loss to the farmer of R291,000. In Pretoria 7,229 carcases were held back, and in Durban 3,119. Those figures show that this contamination occurs throughout the Republic. The total weight of meat held back because of measles during the year 1962-3 was nearly 15,000,000 pounds, with a resultant loss of R596,000. The freezing costs of R3 per carcase represents an additional loss of approximately R100,000. The loss suffered on the offal represents an additional R98,000. The total loss therefore amounts to approximately R694,000. In addition to that there are those carcases which are rejected totally. That brings the loss suffered by the farming community as a result of measles to more than R 1,000,000 per annum.

We cannot allow this state of affairs to continue. This is a serious problem, and the farmers can in fact be saved this money. I feel that we must take positive action in this connection. I want to ask the hon. the Minister to take positive steps and that his Department should work in close collaboration with the Departments of Agricultural Technical Services and Bantu Administration in combating this problem. I know that in certain parts of the country, such as in Pietersburg, in Soutpansberg and in the Thabazimbi area as well, the farmers’ associations have launched certain campaigns to combat this contamination and to stamp out the tape-worm among humans. There is a medicinal remedy available—Yomesan—and the Department tells me that this chemical remedy should preferably be administered to human beings under the supervision of medical practitioners. I know that farmers’ associations have already undertaken to distribute this remedy on a large scale amongst their farm workers in order to prevent their being carriers of the tape-worm. I want to ask that an investigation should be carried out in this regard in order to determine whether this remedy can in fact be made available to the ordinary layman for the purpose of combating measles. I shall be glad to get some information from the Minister in this regard. In the interests of the farming community, I want to ask that the Minister and his Department, in collaboration with the other Departments, should take more positive action to combat this plague, which is a matter of great importance to our farmers.

I know the Committee do not want to devote more time to this Vote and I shall do my utmost to be as brief as possible. The hon. member for Pietersburg (Mr. Niemand) spoke about measles. I want to give him the assurance that the Department of Health has decided to throw in its weight with the Departments of Agriculture in an attempt to meet the farmers in their fight against measles and tape-worm. We have arranged for the organization to be undertaken by other departments and the farmers themselves in certain parts of the Transvaal and for the Department of Health to supervise the administration of the medicine mentioned by the hon. member. The hon. member for Bloemfontein (East) (Mr. van Rensburg) emphasized the importance of the proposed institution for mentally deficient people to serve not only Bloemfontein but the entire Free State. I also want to express my appreciation to the City Council for their magnanimous gesture and to assure the hon. member that as soon as the commission of inquiry has submitted its findings we shall study them very thoroughly.

The hon. member for Winburg (Mr. Sadie) wanted to know why we still paid a membership fee to the World Health Organization. We are still paying this year because we are still a member of the W.H.O. We have also decided to remain a member although we are no longer playing an active part in it. We have friends on the W.H.O., particularly amongst the various Western nations, and we do not want to leave them in the lurch although we have decided, of course, not to play any active part as long as the insult of being deprived of a vote remains in force. If any new developments should take place we shall, of course, react accordingly. The hon. member for Brakpan (Mr. Bezuidenhout) asked that mine compounds be used to accommodate mentally deficient Bantu. The Department is at the moment erecting a hospital at Mafeking and is also considering the erection of an institution at Polela. I want to give him the assurance that when the need arises we shall indeed give consideration to his suggestion. The hon. member for Brakpan raised another important matter, namely, the position of the district surgeon. He pointed out that it was difficult to attract district surgeons to the Department because of the inadequate salaries paid. The whole question of district surgeons was recently revised and their salaries were considerably increased.

Vote put and agreed to.

Revenue Vote No. 30—“Health (Hospitals and Institutions)”, R 12,999,000, put and agreed to.

Revenue Vote No. 31—“Agricultural Economics and Marketing (Administration)”. R 1,865,000, put.

Deputy-Chairman directed to report progress.

HOUSE RESUMED:

Progress reported.