Mr. Speaker, while still reeling from yesterday’s shock and trying like the rest of South Africa to recover from the impact of the increases that have been announced, I now wish to continue where I left off.

I want to indicate immediately the objections the official Opposition has—and I am sure they are shared by other Opposition members—by moving as an amendment—

1. (1) the increases in tariffs—
   1. (a) impose an unnecessary burden on the public;
   2. (b) will add to inflation; and
   3. (c) will add to higher prices and production costs;
2. (2) the timing of the implementation of tariff increases is ill-judged and contrary to the stimulation required by the South African economy”.

Sir, the tariff increases are severe. Overheads in business offices will rise sharply. Every business and office in South Africa now faces a 25% increase in the cost of posting its correspondence and other mail, and a further 25% increase in the cost of using its telephones during business hours. Mail-order houses and other businesses relying on correspondence will be particularly hard hit by the postal increases.

In announcing the anticipated revenue of R53 million, the hon. the Minister has failed to tell the House how much of this amount will be derived from the increases in telephone charges. I trust he will still do so. Someone will in the end have to pay for all these increases, and there are no prizes for guessing that it will be John Citizen. I submit that it is bad fiscal policy to announce increases to become effective in six months’ time and it is worse to say it might even happen sooner. The first announcement creates inflationary expectation as everyone raises prices to meet the increase and the end user is charged now for an increase that will come into effect in six months’ time. The second announcement creates confusion and uncertainty because the increases can be gazetted at any moment as a result of which the public will be caught by surprise. This whole issue, I submit, is a mess.

This is an important budget involving capital expenditure of R363 million, an anticipated operating expenditure of R808 million and revenue amounting to R884 million. It is a budget that affects the pockets and expenses of every individual and firm in South Africa. There can be few who do not post a letter, send a telegram or use a telephone. Therefore this budget plays an important and integral role in the life and the economy of the country.

We have suffered a terrible recession, as everyone knows. Last year our growth rate was barely 1%, the inflation rate was 11% and unemployment was running at 8%. We all know that there are political factors involved, affecting us both internally and externally. It is, however, not my intention to deal with that aspect today. I believe it is my function to deal with the net result, i.e. the financial situation as we find it today. I can only hope that the Government will see fit to provide solutions for the political problems. The power to do so lies squarely in their hands.

If I sense the “vibes” on the economic front correctly, I think the Government will be pitching on a 3,5% to 4% growth rate in the economy. To achieve this, it will have to put cash into the pockets of the people and into the tills of the cash registers. We are aware of the 10% increase in salaries; I think we can anticipate a reduction in personal tax and company tax; the repayment of two loan levies to companies has been anticipated; and the position of the balance of payments has improved remarkably. The gold price should average $230, and gold is at present doing well. It is against this background that we must consider the budget that has been proposed.

On the one hand we must provide for the increase in salaries which will amount to approximately R40 million. This includes the payment of pensions and overtime work and incidental expenses. We must also provide approximately R1,5 million for the increase in transport costs as a result of the higher petrol price. Expenditure has in fact increased from R553 million in 1976-’77 to R626 million in 1977-’78, R716 million in 1978-’79, and now to R808 million. The income for these periods was R629 million in 1976-’77, R694 million in 1977-’78, R769 million in 1978-’79, and it is now R884 million. What is important is that the excess of revenue over expenditure during those years was R76 million in 1976-’77, R86 million in 1977-’78, R64 million in 1978-’79, and is now R76 million. As these last figures are estimates, there is every hope that the actual revenue will exceed the estimated revenue. I am sure it will. Following the principle of the Franzsen Committee, last year 59,9% of the capital expenditure came from loans and 40,1% from self-generated funds. This year 47,3% came from internal funds and 52,7% from loan funds.

I want to quote from the report of the Franzsen Committee and I ask the hon. the Minister and Government members to verify that this is a hard and fast rule and not merely, as I submit, a guide. The hon. the Minister admitted as much in his speech. The commission’s findings have become a debating point in the House. In paragraph 195 of the Third Report of the commission, in which the commission recommends that the share of internal funds as a source for financing the capital expenditure of the Government should be increased, it says the following—

The adjusted tariffs will bring in R53 million. How serious will it be if the ratio is 34,9: 65,1? The postal services showed losses of R22 million in 1976-’77, R30 million in 1977-’78 and R38,3 million in 1978-’79. Telegraphs showed a loss of approximately R10 million. Telecommunications, on the other hand, showed a huge excess of revenue over expenditure of R97 million in 1976-’77 which rose to R100 million in 1977-’78— these are round figures. I estimate from the documents that were laid on the Table that for 1978-’79 it will rise to a total of R124 million. Comparing the estimate of expenditure with actual expenditure, there is an error in budgeting which is understandable. One must anticipate that the rise or fall in the economy will take care of that. The error was 2,8% last year, but I accept that that was due to the general sales tax and that we can look forward to a 1% error in the coming year which, I take it, will be in our favour.

In terms of the Wiehahn Committee’s report financial autonomy was granted in 1968. We must accept that there are two distinct departments, telecommunications being the more profitable and the postal services showing a steady loss as indicated by the figures I have just quoted. There is nothing in the Franzsen Commission’s report, the Wiehahn Committee’s report or any other report which hon. members can produce indicating that each of these two services must be viable and run at a profit. With respect, Sir, the department must be viable as a whole. As long as profits on telecommunications exceed the losses on postal services, a net profit is still being made by the department as a whole and tariff increases in postal services are not justified. Analysing the estimates that have been laid on the Table, I have calculated that in the telecommunication services alone there will be a surplus of R124 million, while the Post Office will show a loss of R48 million. The difference is R76 million, which corresponds with the figures I submitted yesterday. It is clear that the postal service is a service that cannot be viable. For it to be viable, it would have to price the average person out of the market and this would be self-defeating. There is no country in the world that does not show a loss on postal services.

I am advised that in the United States the loss on postal services for 1974-’75 was $2,4 billion despite that department having been subsidized by $1,1 billion. The budget should then be framed to obtain an overall profit which is reasonable. I would say that even R5 million is reasonable. On present figures, the surplus is estimated at R76 million, as I have said. Deducting the tariff increases yielding R53 million, we are left with a surplus of R23 million. That is surely enough. If, on the other hand, one wishes to supplement the revenue on postal services, one must lower profits on the telecommunication services proportionally. I therefore submit that, as long as huge profits are made on telecommunications, there is no justification for increased tariffs on postal services. We are dealing with one department, not two. The one can carry the other.

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: I have no objection to the hon. member reading his speech but may he read it so fast?

The hon. member may proceed.

The hon. the Minister yesterday accepted that, in the national interest, we shall have to accept the principle that the postal services will always have to be carried to some extent by the telecommunication services. We only differ on the extent to which this should be done. We are dealing with taxpayers’ money. We need to balance this budget and we need to be conscious of the fact that this is a public service, a service that must be rendered to the people, by the people and for the people.

I now come to the question of the shortage of telephones. In the annual report and ten year review of the Postmaster General for 1977-’78 it is stated that we have 2,36 million telephones. The number was previously increased by 127 648. Outstanding applications have been reduced from 76 166 to 61 565 as at 31 March 1978. The figure as at 31 March 1979 is 67 500 which, as the Minister indicated, is 6 000 more than last year, and the number will increase. This is the area of concern, the area needing the most urgent attention. Telephones are not a luxury, but a vital necessity in every home, let alone in every office. Priority must be given to the areas where Blacks, Coloureds and Indians live. Last year we had high praise for “Operation Commando” in terms of which a task force of some 250 qualified White technicians and 240 non-White staff with full logistical support was set up to concentrate on certain regions. They did a jolly good job, for which we congratulate them. As a result, the waiting list for telephones was reduced from 35 000 to 13 000, being subsequently further reduced to 11 000 and then to 10 013. I submit, however, that a waiting list of 10 013 telephones is still too long a waiting list. There must be an annual increase in the supplying of telephone services so that not only is the backlog wiped out, but also so that annual demands can be absorbed. We look to “Operation Soweto” for relief because a waiting list of 5 000 subscribers in Soweto is still too long a waiting list. The matter certainly needs attention. We do, however, appreciate the R8 million allocated for the cable system in non-White areas.

The previous Minister announced an expenditure of R126 million in five years, but I think we must step up this expenditure if it is possible. I still want to know why, when an application for the registration of a township is made, and approval is given, the department does not start planning its cables and services to coincide with the building and occupation of the domestic, commercial and industrial sectors of the township. I must therefore launch a plea for better coordination. Just as the timeous provision of water, electricity and sewerage facilities are necessary, so are telephone services and they should be included accordingly. I am prepared to go so far as to place telephone services in the same essential service category, and there should be a policy decision making telephone services part of the essential service structure. I say this because the provision of a telephone could, on certain occasions, be a matter of life or death to a particular resident.

Certain other specific problems will be dealt with by hon. members on this side of the House and so I shall not go into detail about those problems now.

What I want to turn to now is the question of vandalism. According to the report of the Auditor-General for 1977-’78 there were 906 cases of damage to telephone routes and missing telephones, the loss involved being the amount of R1 021,48. There were 2 790 cases of theft and damage to telephone apparatus, the net loss being R2 983,56. This is alarming! The answer clearly lies with the table telephone, but what militates against this is the difficulty of using such telephones after hours. Because telephones are such an essential service, people should not be punished, by being deprived of the use of a telephone, merely because of the actions of a few vandals.

My appeal is that local authorities be requested to assist by having such telephones at clinics, recreational centres, sport stadiums and other municipal venues. Likewise, provincial authorities should assist by providing such telephones at hospitals, clinics and other provincial institutions. Let me remind the House that last year I made two requests in this connection, and that no one seemed to reject my ideas.

Firstly, I suggested that table telephones be installed in the messes and canteens at army camps. I would even go so far as to say in bungalows as well. There are still complaints of long queues of people waiting to phone from the camps or people waiting to be phoned at the camps. The complaint is that the few phones there are always seem to be engaged.

I also suggested that telephones be placed on national roads, at least every 10 km or 25 km on long and lonely stretches between towns. This would be of great assistance to motorists.

Since I am now on the subject of the provision of telephone services, let me praise the extension of overseas services, allowing people to dial to 186 countries, the 1 357 circuits in operation and the 204 satellites serving the Post Office’s needs. As a result there is now direct dialling to 32 countries. The service is prompt and efficient and worthy of my praise. It is, of course, also profitable. I wish I could say the same, however, about local dialling and inter-city dialling. In these instances the service is not as clear and prompt, giving rise to many delays which are annoying, time-consuming and a waste of money.

The Minister returned from an overseas trip recently and his report was received with great interest. We look forward to Potelin and its importance in the electronic era. Now that the decision has been finally made on the French E10 and the German EWS-D electronic switching systems for South Africa, we look forward to their installation.

Turning to the question of staff, I wish to express our complete approval of the 10% increase they will be granted as from 1 April. It is well deserved. I want to extend our compliments to Mr. Rive, his staff and the rank and file in the Post Office for the dedication and loyalty they have shown. Last year 7 713 officials resigned, approximately 3 000 fewer than in the year before. At present the Post Office has a staff of 26 440. I accept that this figure is governed by the state of the economy, the availability of staff on the open market and the attraction of the take-home pay envelopes the Post Office offers.

I would, however, again press for the elimination of the wage gap between men and women on the one hand and between White and Black on the other. One must particularly bear in mind that the majority of the staff are women. I welcome the pay increases of 10% for Whites, 12,5% for Coloureds and 15% for Blacks, which show that an attempt is being made to narrow the gap. However, the wage gap, which ranges from 100% to 87%% and 67%%, is not acceptable. The gap in respect of the various staff members must be closed. There is no excuse for its not being closed. I have raised this matter before and will make no apology for raising it again and again until the gap has been closed completely. It is calculated that it would require R2,9 million to close the gap that is created by 4 464 Black officials being paid an average of R50 less than their White counterparts doing similar work. After what we saw at Belhar, can anyone justify this discrimination?

With the modern, sophisticated telephone communication equipment we have today, we must more than ever train workers of all race groups. All universities should offer B.Sc. degrees in electrical and mechanical engineering and in computer science as well as B.Com. degrees. Bursaries for postal courses through Black colleges and also Indian universities should be available. We should have Chairs in these faculties established at these universities.

I also want to call for the recruitment of Post Office staff from the army and for a positive programme to be undertaken of canvassing troops and enlightening them on the Post Office service. Officials can pay periodic visits to troops for this purpose.

I wish the department luck with the new Post Office training college at Belhar. It has all the necessary training facilities and is an excellent project. Army recruits can be sent there for training.

Last year I raised the question of medical aid for Black workers and I should like to know whether anything has been done in that regard.

Mr. Speaker, I intend raising further matters in the Committee Stage.

Mr. Speaker, before I come to the hon. member for Hillbrow, I want to congratulate the hon. the Minister on the introduction of his first Post Office budget. I think he did it very well and efficiently. It was a pleasure to listen to him. I also want to congratulate him on the budget as such. It was an excellent budget. I think it is also appropriate that we emphasize the excellent annual report which the Minister and his department submitted to us. It contains impressive statistics. It is truly a privilege for any member of Parliament to receive an annual report which is drafted so well and contains so much information as this annual report. For that reason I decidedly want to express my satisfaction with the report today. I want to add that it was probably not an easy task to submit to us such a good budget as that which we have before us at present, after four years of having to contend with economic trends like inflation, etc.

The hon. member for Hillbrow really blew off steam yesterday. I shall do some refuting of his arguments as I go along. The very first question I ask myself and which all of us should ask ourselves, is: What is the function and task of the Post Office? I cannot put it better than by quoting the Post Office Act of 1958 as amended by Act No. 113 of 1976 in section 12A. We must take a look at this. We must assess this budget on the basis of this section and consider whether the hon. the Minister has introduced a good budget. Section 12A reads as follows—

This Act laid down certain guidelines. Within this framework, and true to the charter of this Parliament, the hon. the Minister and his department submitted this budget to us. Section 12A(2) reads as follows—

It seems to me the hon. member for Hillbrow never examined this law. He did not consider the things which the hon. the Minister has to consider. The hon. member said yesterday: “I can only express my shock and alarm and that of the public of South Africa.”

That is correct.

I want to ask the hon. member on behalf of which section of the public of South Africa is he speaking.

On behalf of my voters.

Since when? [Interjections.] Half of his voters reject him. That hon. member has no right to stand up here and profess that he is speaking on behalf of the public of South Africa. Surely hon. members on this side of the House are more entitled than that hon. member to say what the public of South Africa wants. The hon. member had so much to say, but his own newspaper, The Cape Times, does not even take any notice of him. If he looks at the leading article of this newspaper, he will see that he is completely ignored. Therefore the hon. member must not pretend here in a presumptious and arrogant way that he is speaking on behalf of the public of South Africa and that he knows better than the hon. the Minister, his department and all of us. That hon. member should think again on that score.

Rather tell us about the Connie Mulder fund.

The hon. member went on to discuss the increased tariffs. I want to concede just one point to him, because I am also going to discuss it, and that is that the telegram tariff is perhaps a little too high. Why didn’t he take his argument a little further? Why didn’t he suggest something? But no, he simply says that all tariffs should be lowered. He cut loose with a tremendous outcry, but at the end of his speech he began to fall flat. Can the hon. member tell us what we must do away with if we are not to increase tariffs? Should we do away with the 10% salary increase or should we tell the people of Johannesburg that we are not going to provide any new telecommunication services there? The budget must balance. We cannot continue in this way. The hon. member quoted certain figures yesterday. I want to refer to them briefly. He referred, inter alia, to the surpluses shown over the years, specifically to the surplus in 1975-’76. He stated that there was a surplus of R82 million that year. I think the official Opposition should get a better speaker than that hon. member. He is a good person and I have nothing against him, but he has no knowledge of finance. It is a disaster for this House and for South Africa that a speaker of the official Opposition is incapable of reading this little statement. The Post Office Act indicates very clearly what the Post Office is responsible for. A loan of R19 million was repaid from this surplus, an amount of R58 million was allocated to capital expenditure and an amount of R4 million to the purchase of standard stock. That money was obtained from this surplus of R82 million. For everybody’s convenience the department drafted this budget in such a way that it is very legible. However, if a person does not understand money matters and does not know how these things work, it is very difficult to explain them to him. We had the same case in 1976-’77 when there was a surplus of R76 million. Again I ask: Where is the money for loan redemption to come from if it is not taken from this surplus? Does the hon. member want the Post Office to go and borrow the money in order to repay its loans? One has to take a certain amount of money from the surplus money in order to pay off loans. This has always been the case. The hon. member for Hillbrow mentioned four to five successive years, but he is so blind that he cannot see that loans were repaid in those years. If the Post Office had not recovered any loans from surplus for five years, where was the money to come from? How would the standard stock which had already been purchased, be financed? I shall again refer to loans at a later stage. In 1977-’78 we had exactly the same story. Of the R76 million, R41 million went towards the repayment of loans. Surely this is something which had to be done. There was other capital expenditure, too, which had to be repaid over those years. If the hon. member wants to criticize, he must do so constructively and must also come forward with the correct facts. This is what we want from him, and I hope that other hon. Opposition speakers will come forward with something better.

The hon. member also had quite a lot to say about the Franzsen Committee. It is true that 50% of the funds for capital extensions must be self-generated. If the hon. member examines the statements, he will see that the burden of interest for 1979-’80 is R108 million and this has to come from operating expenditure. This represents 14,6% of the total operating expenditure. What does the hon. member suggest this percentage, which we have to take to recover the interest, should be? Should it be more or less than 15%? The hon. member must speak up now. He can say “yes” or “no”. Should it be more or less than 15%? Now he is speechless, as if he has lost his tongue.

He does not understand you.

An hon. member states that he does not understand me, but I do not believe the hon. member is so stupid. He and I often discuss matters. No, the hon. member just does not have the background for finance. The disaster has struck him that he has to discuss things here that he knows nothing about. The fact is that the burden of interest may not become too high for any undertaking. Over the years we have often debated this matter in this House in discussing certain State corporations. In the early years of their existence, Iscor, Sasol and Escom kept their prices low in order to stimulate the economy of this country. That was the correct policy, and owing to those low prices the economy could expand, but as a result those bodies were unable to build up enough capital over the years to finance their own projects. However, from the outset, over the past 10 years, the Post Office has ensured that it has built up enough money from its own capital to pay for its capital works itself. We should rather spend less and not more than 15% of our expenditure on interest. If another hon. member from that side of the House speaks after me, I should very much like him to tell us briefly what his view is on this matter.

There is another matter to which I want to refer, viz. the 50% which has to come from self-generated funds for capital expenditure. The greater portion of loan capital is utilized for telecommunications equipment and we cannot get away from the fact that as far as telecommunications are concerned, these are things that do not have a long lifespan. As a result of the tremendously rapid growth in the world and the technological development in telecommunications, these things become obsolete every day. As a result the department is compelled to change over to newer and more modern equipment. We cannot lag behind the rest of the world. Some of the equipment is expensive and its lifespan is but a few years. As a result it is neither desirable, wise nor sound economic and financial policy to negotiate a number of loans and then to carry the loans over to a future generation which then has to pay for things that were obsolete and discarded a long time ago.

I could continue in this vein and mention quite a few things. In the amendment he proposed, the hon. member maintains that this budget is inflationary, that it does not promote growth, that it creates extra burdens for the public, etc. I want to know from the hon. member if he is honestly convinced that this budget is inflationary.

Yes.

Of course it is. [Interjections.]

Well, there we have it now. Now, however, I want to know a few other things from those hon. members. I wonder if they will be so quick to say yes this time. In South Africa we have cost pressure inflation, and not demand inflation. One of the effects of this budget is that the public will have more money at its disposal. Salary increases which are to be granted, are by no means inflationary either. They would have been extremely inflationary if we had been dealing with cost pressure inflation. However, we have demand inflation. The consumer is now acquiring more capital. In other words, people will have more money to spend. This is what we need in South Africa today. The Government has itself taken various steps to make more money available to the banks, the public and other bodies. Consequently the public has more money to spend. Because the public has more money to spend, the country’s economy can grow. Production will increase. Factories will be more productive. Therefore it is no longer necessary that we be saddled with unutilized capacity. More people can be employed. That is what will happen. Taking all these things into consideration, it is clear that this budget is geared for growth far more than for inflation. These are two concepts which are diametrically opposed. If the hon. member for Hillbrow learns his economic lesson tonight, he will find that these are two conflicting concepts. If we should concentrate on one of them, however, it does not follow that the remaining one is wholly counteracted. These are factors which sometimes go hand in hand. While doing one thing, we sometimes also promote the other. The effect of this budget will, however, promote growth more than inflation.

If, then, the budget is so inflationary, I want to know from the hon. member if we are all going to write letters to our children, to our family and to our friends tonight, whether this will be inflationary. Prices will not rise for that reason. There are many similar things. We phone our friends, for example. How many telephone conversations in South Africa are not just ordinary social conversations, conversations which have nothing on earth to do with the price of anything? How, then, can this be inflationary? [Interjections.] Post Office workers will now have more money at their disposal. As a result of growth there will also be more money in the hands of certain industrialists in South Africa. The Post Office does not do all its work itself. The hon. the Minister himself said that the Post Office had far too many suppliers. In our case there are five, whereas other countries have only two or three. Therefore, the industries benefit from this Post Office budget because it provides them with more work.

This Post Office budget also assists the transportation services in South Africa. The Railways and the Airways will obtain more money as a result of this. Those hon. members really must not think that the Government consists of dunces. The Government’s people think. They use their intelligence when they draft budgets. Budgets are carefully considered, and those who deliberate on them for hours, do good work. The hon. member for Hillbrow contends that this budget will not be conducive to growth. However, I am sure that the hon. member will see that, when these tariff increases come into effect on 1 October, it will not be as bad as he thinks. Now the hon. member says it is not clear to him when the increased tariffs will take effect, that it will perhaps be very soon. However, the hon. the Minister stated very clearly that it will be from 1 October.

Again you did not listen carefully.

The hon. the Minister did say that the date on which the new tariffs will take effect, could be changed due to unforeseen circumstances. However, how can the hon. member be certain as to when it will be? It may not happen at all this year.

The hon. the Minister does not know himself.

However, the hon. member for Hillbrow has such a gift of second sight that he only sees ghosts and nothing else. The hon. member also made a big fuss about the increased tariffs on publications which are not bona fide newspapers. This only takes effect as from 1 April 1980 and not in October 1979.

However, the hon. member crowned everything when he stated the following—

When the hon. the Minister states that the estimate of expenditure in the additional budget, is R29,9 million as opposed to R24,8 million in revenue, surely the expenditure is R4 million more than the revenue. The hon. member is now actually saying that that means a profit!

[Inaudible.]

Now the hon. member says so. Yesterday, however, he stated: “… announced a net profit”. It says so in his Hansard. The reason why the official Opposition is losing ground so fast, is that their losses are their profits. Does the hon. member know what a profit means? The hon. the Minister said that the net difference between the two amounts is R4 million. If the hon. member for Hillbrow understands what a profit means, I need not go further. The chief spokesman of the official Opposition on Posts and Telecommunications simply changes losses to profits. I think he should be promoted to Postmaster-General.

I now want to dwell on tariffs a little. The hon. member for Hillbrow made a number of statements this afternoon. The hon. the Minister announced certain tariff increases which will take effect as from 1 October. However, there is a list of tariffs, almost a foot in length, which have not been increased. Tariffs on postal services, insurance fees on parcels, the inquiry fees on lost postal articles, classification guarantees on domestic parcels or certified articles, demurrage on parcels, registration of newspapers, post box rental, private bag money rental, business answering service, postal service fees, etc., were not even increased. The commission on postal orders and other money despatches was not increased either. Quite a substantial sum of money is involved. Agency commissions, too, went without an increase.

As far as telecommunications are concerned, all telephone rental remain unchanged. Telex rentals, data rentals and local calls from call-boxes remain the same. The hon. member can phone from a “tickey box” every night. Furthermore, tariffs on foreign telex calls, internal and overseas subscriber’s circuits, foreign telegram services, installations for telephone exchange lines—party as well as farm lines—have remained the same. These are quite substantial amounts. All installation fees, telex services, data services and hire connections also remain the same.

I want to invite the hon. member to examine these tariffs with me. The postage on a airmail letter was previously 5c and was then reduced to 4c. The tariff has just been increased to 5c again. What happens now, is that the open envelopes in which, inter alia, accounts are sent out, must now be pasted shut when they are posted. The open envelope caused endless problems for the sorting machine. There was always some problem or other. I think it is a very good thing that these people also pay a small amount extra. Printed matter, for example, has been increased from 3c to 5c, with a 20% reduction if it is posted in a block of 100. This can be done. In other words, the increase is only from 3c to 4c, which is not such a large increase at all.

We can also take a brief look at newspapers. I want to say to the hon. member that it is true that the tariff on newspapers has been increased. However, I asked myself whether the newspapers in South Africa cannot pay this small additional sum in postage. Why must the telephone user, the postal service user, Tom, Dick and Harry, and each of us finance the newspapers to such an extent? They make huge profits, and therefore they might as well pay a little more postage. It is certainly not inflationary if a newspaper has to pay for this service. I think that little increase is completely justifiable, for when last was the tariff on this service rendered to newspaper groups, increased? In this regard I am also thinking of printed matter. The tariff of 3c rose to 5c, whereas a 20% reduction is granted if work is handed in on a large scale. I do not consider this such a large increase at all. I want to make another suggestion in this regard. I can give the hon. the Minister the assurance that I have, in fact, investigated these matters. With regard to the telegram tariffs, I want to suggest that the tariff of 3c per word be increased to 4c per word and not to 5c per word. I also want to put it to the hon. the Minister for his consideration that as far as Press telegrams are concerned, the tariff of 30c for the first 30 words be increased to 60c, and not to 50c. Instead of 2c for every three words after that, the tariff should be 4c for every three words after that. The hon. the Minister estimates earnings of R4½ million more through telegram services. If we introduce these small changes, as I have proposed, we will just make the amount. The general public, and we old people who regularly have to send telegrams in connection with sickness and good wishes, will be accommodated in this way, because the cost of the service will be less. The tariffs of the person who can pay, for example the senders of Press telegrams, can therefore increase a little. My argument does not apply to parliamentary Press telegrams, for I think it is a good thing that the Press should be able to send telegrams across the country from here about what is being said here. I should also be pleased if they also want to transmit that hon. member’s view of net profit, etc., across the country, so that the people can see that he does not know what a profit or a loss means. I think this is a factor which should be given very serious consideration, and I want to recommend this highly to the hon. the Minister.

Another matter to which I want to refer, is the microwave tower at Lucasrand, Sunnyside. The estimated cost for the construction of this tower was R4,6 million. The tower will apparently be completed at the end of this year. The tower is situated at a very strategic place, and besides that, it is also situated in a constituency which is very proud to have it there. It is a national landmark and we should also bear in mind that it could also become a national monument for South Africa. When the work on the tower is completed, I want to suggest that the tower be named after some person who has contributed and done a great deal for posts and telecommunications in South Africa. The tower could also be named after somebody else, but I think it would be a good thing if it were specifically named after such a person, so that that person’s name could live on in our history. When a person has offered his whole life and all his energies to a cause, it is good to preserve his memory. I therefore put this to the hon. the Minister for his serious consideration. Furthermore, I want to request that the terrain there be properly looked after, that it be tidied up, that beautiful gardens be laid out there so that it can become a source of pride to Sunnyside. Sunnyside has fine people and I can commend them.

Finally, I just want to say that this Post Office budget is not just there so that we can send letters, etc. I want to know from hon. members today: Is there a single other body in South Africa which has more strategic value than the Post Office? There is no such body. The Post Office enables us to communicate with one another in all respects, whether in time of peace or war. This communication can take place by means of television, radio, etc. The Post Office is the instrument for all these communication channels. The authorities would be unable to reach the public but for the work of the Post Office. If it were not for services like television, radio, telephone and post, how would one reach the public? One cannot send a letter to each of them. I think we should give more attention to these matters.

It is also important that we look after the interests of our post offices more and that we should have more appreciation for what they are doing. The Post Office does its best, and as a result of its excellent, sound and effective services rendered during the past few years by its well-motivated staff, commerce, industry and agriculture have been able to grow to where they are at present. If we take everything into consideration, I think it is a credit to South Africa that the Post Office could grow to such an extent in four years that only a few small increases were included in the budget. I want to express my thanks to the hon. the Minister, Mr. Rive and his top management.

Mr. Speaker, I hope the hon. member for Sunnyside will forgive me if I do not follow on what he had to say, as he devoted most of his speech to matters raised by the hon. member for Hillbrow. Firstly, I want to congratulate the hon. the Minister on his first budget. I do not congratulate him in the sense that I think this is a good budget. I think it is rather unfortunate for him that it had to be a rather traumatic budget. As it is, I think it has been rather traumatic for him and for South Africa as a whole, because I think it has been traumatic for commerce, industry and, of course, for the general public.

And the farmers as well.

Yes, and for the farmers as well.

†I think, however, that it is fitting that we should pay tribute to the Post Office because it stands today at the end of 10 notable years in its history. It has made tremendous strides over the past 10 years, tremendous strides since it was recommended in 1968 by the Wiehahn Committee that the Post Office should be granted financial autonomy and that it should be run on business principles and, furthermore, that it be empowered to utilize its profits as it saw fit. The results have been dramatic, to say the least of it. We have seen a consistent pattern of growth. We see, what is not so apparent in other Government departments, and that is a spirit of competition being engendered. We see pride in workmanship and, what is also extremely important, we see completely changed attitudes on the part of the staff in their relationship with the general public. As I have said before, we have in the Post Office the pace-setter of the Public Service. The Post Office is the pace-setter in many ways and one of its outstanding achievements was the removal of discrimination from all post offices.

I now come to the provisions of the budget. I must say at the outset that, while I agree with the sentiments expressed in the amendment moved by the hon. member for Hillbrow on behalf of the official Opposition, we on these benches have also drawn up an amendment, which I want to move as a further amendment—

1. (1) the extent of the proposed tariff increases is ill-considered;
2. (2) the increases will contribute to an increase in the rate of inflation; and
3. (3) the increases will have an adverse effect on both the private and the business sector at a time when the economy needs stimulation”.

I believe the hon. the Minister had to introduce some measure of tariff increases. I believe it was inevitable, because he has rising costs to meet. I believe, firstly, that we must accept the increase in salaries gladly, because the Post Office staff deserve these increases for their efforts. We believe that they deserve these increases, because they too are fighting the cost of living spiral. They also have rising costs to meet.

We also accept that the Post Office has to face an enormous increase in its fuel bill. The Post Office of necessity has to run a tremendous fleet of vehicles. But I believe the hon. the Minister has gone for the overkill. This is what it is all about today. He has gone for the overkill by the extent of the tariff increases, increases that are totally inappropriate at a time when it behoves all of us, particularly so the Government, to do everything possible to curb inflation.

These increases will bring in something like R53 million over the six months from 1 October when they become effective. That R53 million, we are told, will be sufficient to balance the books for 1979-’80. I therefore submit that in the financial year 1980-’81 these increases will obviously bring in an amount of R106 million, and that is going to be more than enough—at least, I sincerely hope it is going to be more than enough—to not only balance the books, but also to furnish a substantial surplus for the year 1980-’81. I know the hon. the Minister agrees with me, but that is what I mean by “overkill”.

We are all aware of the fact that the 1972 Franzsen Commission report set down a very important guideline by stating that 50% of capital requirements should come from loans and 50% from self-generated funds. This is an ideal situation, but I stress that this was merely a guideline. “Guideline” is the operative word. Thus far the hon. the Minister’s predecessors have done well and have managed to stay near the median. However, we are faced with a problem in the coming year. The hon. the Minister reported in his speech yesterday that owing to rising costs and other factors the self-financing component will drop to 34,9%. Let me therefore say, in the kindest way possible, that I believe he has panicked in the sense that he has now introduced tariff increases that will give him, and I quote his words—

I ask you, 58%! That is 8% more than the median. Why so much more? He talked of the limits of self-financing as being between 40% at the lower limit and 60% at the upper limit and correctly suggested that the median of 50% should be aimed at. He goes ahead, however, with tariff increases that are aimed at bringing in 58%.

What is the percentage this year?

The figure this year is 41%. I accept that fact, but let us, just for once in this House, talk a bit about the future. Let us talk about what is coming, and not about what has gone, otherwise we shall start talking all over again about 1948. [Interjections.] This, I respectfully suggest to the hon. the Minister, is too much, and again let me tell him he is overkilling.

I accept that it is easy to criticize, in fact very easy to do that. So I shall always—at least, I hope I shall always—try to offer what I consider to be a reasonable alternative when I am criticizing something. I do believe that one must try to offer an alternative. One must try to be constructively critical because destructive and negative criticism is petty and meaningless. I therefore believe that the hon. the Minister should have made the median of 50% his maximum target. That would have been acceptable to us all. He should therefore have turned more towards loan income and softened the tariff increase impact accordingly. He would thereby have achieved his objective and obtained the necessary results without the degree of trauma we are experiencing today.

Let us look at these increases. Firstly there is the figure of 12,78%. As far as that is concerned, one has to say: Well done! It is certainly deserving of praise when one considers that increases have been held down for quite a few years now, this being the first increase of any substance since 1975. An increase of 12¾% does not seem much at first glance, but let us look at the details. Open letters, second-class mail, have gone by the board and the tariff for that type of mail is up by 66⅔%, an increase from three cents to five cents. For an ordinary letter the tariff is up by 25%; the tariff for newspapers is up by 50% and 100%; the tariff for printed matter is up by 66⅔%; the tariff for registered items is up by 331/3%; the tariff for express deliveries is up by 50% and telephone call charges have increased by 25%.

Here I must now turn my attention to the hon. member for Sunnyside. To him I must say: Please, in heaven’s name, let us not talk about personal telephone calls. “What are telephone calls?” he asked and then went on to say: “They are just little conversations between our friends and ourselves.” Does the hon. member not know what commerce spends on telephone charges? It is an enormous amount of money. Yet the increase, is 25%. The increase in the unit rate for telex calls is 25%. The tariff for telegrams is increased by 66⅔%. These are big increases and they will hit hard at all sectors of the community. The private sector is going to feel it and businesses will have to look very carefully at the effects of the budget.

I believe that one must always give credit where credit is due. I believe credit is due to the hon. the Minister and to the department in that they have given ample warning. I think this attitude is a sound one and all concerned should be congratulated. This is a businesslike way of announcing an increase. This is a businesslike way of telling people what is going to happen in that they are being told what will happen probably six months hence. It gives commerce and industry ample time to prepare themselves and to readjust their budgets. Readjustment is going to be the name of the game for commerce and industry. I think we are going to see a tremendous fall—I think the hon. the Minister should bear this in mind—in the volume of mail. A fall in junk mail is the first one that I can think of. In many respects it will be a great pity. The increases will also be a severe blow to mail-order houses and the like. I suggest that there will be a fall-off due to the abolition of second-class mail. An example that comes to mind is the business house that posts out an invoice. This will not be done any longer. I certainly shall not do it. I shall wait until the end of the month and then attach all my invoices to the statement and send the whole lot out together. This is what commerce is going to do too. They are going to button up. They are not going to mail as many things as they have up until now.

Telephone, telex and telegram traffic is also going to fall off. In regard to telephone, telex and telegram traffic, I think the hon. the Minister is probably relying on human nature to take its own course and that is to view the increases with alarm at first and thereafter to settle down back to their own happy habits.

Having said what I have said about the aspects of the budget which cause the most concern, I feel that I must also turn to the more pleasant aspects. Telephone services constitute a mixture of both, really. National dialling facilities have increased from 15% to 87% over ten years. This is an outstanding achievement, particularly so when one considers the difficulties in servicing rural areas. Rural areas, however, are still suffering under antiquated party-line systems. I submit that the installation of the SOR 8 systems must be given top priority, particularly in what I want to refer to as agriculturally industrialized areas where you have an agriculture which you can term “industry”. Sugar is an example of this type of agriculture. There are many others where you have a lot of people concentrated in a comparatively small area using the party-line system.

I notice, in the words of the hon. the Minister, that the waiting list for telephones at 31 March is expected to stand at 67 500. My initial reaction was one of concern. I thought it should give one concern when one sees that there is an increase of approximately 6 000 over the figure for last year. I was, however, delighted to read in this morning’s Cape Times—

Mr. Rive said the eventual aim was to provide telephone services within 48 hours of application.

The mere fact that the Postmaster-General has said that that is what they aim for, delights me, and I must warn the hon. the Minister, and through him possibly also the Postmaster-General, that we shall be knocking this one each and every year until we get this result. That is what we have to have. I do not believe the Postmaster-General is a man who is given to idle comment. So I look forward to the day when his words become a reality, because I believe that will be the greatest day in the history of telecommunications in South Africa.

I now want to refer to the question of staff training. I should like to compliment the hon. the Minister on the steps taken for the training of technicians, particularly in respect of Coloured and Indian trainee technicians and telecommunications trainees. This is a subject I have raised in this House over the years and it gives me no little measure of satisfaction to see these numbers increasing as each year goes by. Last week we attended the official opening of the Belhar Post Office Training College. It was stated in a speech made there that “one group alone cannot do it”. Those words stuck in my mind. That is exactly the name of the game. The lifeblood of this nation—the telecommunications service—has to be kept in a 100% condition, but “one group alone cannot do it”. We need skilled personnel of all race groups to keep the blood flowing through the arteries and veins of this system. One of my hon. colleagues will later deal with staff and labour matters in greater depth.

We welcome decentralization. We think it is significant to note the hon. the Minister’s comments in respect of this matter. I believe he has motivated his case well. He has given us details of his proposals in this regard. It is also significant to note that he hopes to achieve the required result without major staff increases. Again this is evidence of sound business management. It is sound business management and good business practice to do this sort of thing.

Rationalization is another step in the right direction. Here again we have noted the hon. the Minister’s comments. We, too, are concerned about the fact that at the moment we have five suppliers of telecommunication equipment as opposed to two in most major European countries. We are very pleased about the fact that now apparently we are going to standardize on the French E-10 and the German EWS-D electronic switch systems, although I must say that but a short while ago we were talking about the CP44 and CP24 systems, which seem to have gone by the board. But we accept that ever-changing circumstances and the evolution in the field of electronics is so fast that obviously we have to keep pace with these changing times.

We welcome the three differentiated rates for trunk calls. We believe that the rate for weekends is a welcome one, because families will be able to contact each other at one-third of the normal rate.

It is a socio-economic service.

Yes, it is a socio-economic service. In conclusion I want to thank the hon. the Minister for the work that has been done over the past year. We congratulate him, the Postmaster-General and the staff of every post office right throughout the length and breadth of South Africa for a job well done. We wish them well in the coming year. I want to say again that the Minister has gone for the overkill, and for that we do not thank him.

Mr. Speaker, it is obvious that I disagree with the speech and especially with the amendment of the hon. member for Umhlanga. However, his criticism was very balanced and constructive, and when a person does it in such a responsible way, then I like to give credit for it, because I appreciate it. I want to add that since the hon. member for Johannesburg North publicly appealed to the NRP yesterday to move closer to them, the two parties have really drawn up amendments to achieve the same end, but have merely used other words. Nevertheless, in as far as I differ with the hon. member for Umhlanga, I shall come back to his arguments in the course of my speech.

I first want to spend a little time on the hon. member for Hillbrow. That hon. member was very damning in his evidence and accusations levelled at the Government. He stated that “I express the alarm and shock of the public at the tariff increases. It is ill-judged and ill-timed. ” He merely touched on the situation. However, what is interesting is that his own newspaper, The Cape Times, does not refer to it in those terms at all. On the contrary, The Cape Times says: “It is a favourable budget.” The Argus does not comment on the increases, but the PFP also differs from its own newspapers. Die Burger said “Dit is aan die gesonde beleid van die posterye te danke dat tariewe nie reeds veel hoër is nie.” In other words, the hon. member is completely alone in his criticism.

I want to enlarge on what the hon. member for Sunnyside said and just point out a few incorrect calculations which the hon. member for Hillbrow made in his speech. That is besides the fact that he blithely converted a deficit of R4 million into a profit of R4 million, but let us forgive him for that; it is a human error. However, he keeps harping on the surplus of R76 million, while surely it is clear from the statements that the loan redemption and the increase of standard stock must be subtracted.

One also then arrives at an operating surplus of R56 million. Surely this is what it is all about. This already makes a difference of R20 million. This is quite a large sum if one also bears in mind the other R4 million which was converted from a loss to a profit in this way. However, what happens now? The hon. member for Hillbrow says there should have been no tariff increases. In other words, the additional R53 million to be obtained from the general increase, which is a little less than 13%, must now be subtracted from the surplus which is being budgeted for. In other words, where we are concerned here with a budget of approximately R1 000 million, we have to work on an anticipated surplus of R3 million. This is indeed what the hon. member for Hillbrow is advocating here. This in itself means that the self-financing component will drop to 34,9%, which is diametrically opposed to the recommendation of the Franzsen Committee.

The hon. member for Hillbrow decided to quote from the Franzsen Committee report and he wanted to play with the figures a little so that he could try to prove that it was not necessary to move between the danger poles of 40% and 60%. The hon. member was trying to show why one could drop to 34,9%, viz. 5,1% below the danger line. What the hon. member stated here this afternoon is diametrically opposed to what he stated in this House last year. I refer to Hansard, 1978, col. 2927, where he stated—

Now the hon. member is condemning himself, because he did say that when we dropped below the 40% mark, tariffs had to be increased. However, now that we are increasing tariffs this year—precisely what he warned against last year—in order to rise above that mark, he criticizes tariff increases and says that we may drop below the mark and should accept 34%. How on earth can one adapt one’s point of view and policy from year to year as it suits one? How can one do that? Surely there must be direction in one’s financial argument if one wants to do things on a sound financial footing.

Let us take the argument further. It would mean that where we were 9% under the 50% this year, viz. a mere 41%, we have to add a further 15% that we are going to be short for the new year. This means that an additional 24% will have to be borrowed in two years’ time. In other words, money must be borrowed from the Treasury and overseas and high interest has to be paid on it in order to subsidize postal services. That is, after all, what the hon. member requested. Are we not in that way digging a grave for posterity? Surely we are trying to place the Post Office on a sound financial footing. If ever the hon. member for Hillbrow made an irresponsible statement in this House, I believe, it was his statement that tariff increases should now be relinquished and that the Post Office should decide on a self-financing policy of 34%. If one considers this in the light of a suggestion which the hon. member made here last year, viz. that postage should be reduced by one cent per unit—and that, of course, despite the losses already being suffered on postage—it is clear in what a financial muddle the hon. member will eventually find himself. In other words, the hon. member and his party want to distribute the profits straight away in order to gain votes. Surely that is very clear.

He concedes that the cost of living has risen. He advocates that the wage gap between the various races be narrowed quickly. Surely the Government requires money for that. We know that the price of fuel has risen. We also know that there is a tremendous increase in the general sales tax. How are all these costs to be covered? The hon. member does not want price increases either. How then are all the costs to be covered? The only conclusion I can draw is that the hon. member wants the Post Office to head for financial disaster. Surely it is very clear that if we handed the Post Office to the PFP, it would go bankrupt within a year. They would waste all the assets of the Post Office, merely to get hold of votes—nothing else.

Like you did with the white bread in 1948.

Let us analyse the speeches and the attitudes of the hon. member for Hillbrow a little further. On 13 March last year the hon. member stated in this House (Hansard, 1978, col. 2877)—

Was it misleading? It was the finest, most positive budget one could get for this financial year. It was in fact a budget which missed the mark by a mere R4 million, and we must take into consideration that almost R1 milliard was budgeted for. Furthermore, the hon. member for Hillbrow expressed the misgiving last year that the hon. the Minister might use his statutory rights to announce quite drastic tariff increases in the course of the year. Did the hon. the Minister do so? He never did so. We experienced a positive, restful, sound financial year. Now the hon. the Minister has once again been decent enough to announce that the increases will only take effect in six months’ time. In certain cases he stated that the increases would only take effect in 12 months’ time. That is how decent the hon. the Minister has been. Now the hon. member for Hillbrow expresses the serious misgiving that the hon. the Minister may simply proceed out of the blue to let the tariff increases take effect at an earlier date. Is it necessary to be so distrustful? If that is one’s attitude, is it not also the reason why those hon. members cannot trust one another in their own party? Surely their whole attitude is wrong, in their approach to this particular budget as well.

Let us dwell for a moment on the tariffs. The hon. member for Umhlanga has a problem with, as he puts it, the sharp rise in the curve of tariff increases. The hon. member for Hillbrow has the same problem. However, let us examine the situation briefly. Let us begin with the postal services. In the 1976-’77 financial year there was a loss of R21 million. In the following year the loss rose to R30 million, and then to R38 million. Now the loss is R47 million, despite the increase in postal tariffs. Should one, therefore, simply allow increases to continue ad infinitum? Should one simply allow one’s losses to increase by R9 million of R10 million per annum? Should one do this while one is really rendering a service to the public? What policy should one follow? Can one justify oneself if one’s losses keep increasing, while at the same time maintaining in this House that postage and other tariffs may not be increased?

The tariffs of the postal services were increased eight years ago, and in the course of those eight years there was indeed another reduction when it was announced that airmail was being reduced from five cents to four cents. We could analyse this situation further. Let us see what the postage was eight years ago, before the last increase. If we award 100 points to that mark, and we put the general consumer price index at that stage at 100 too, we will find, when we look at the two increases, including this increase, that the postal tariffs have increased from a mark of 100 to 119,9 over the past eight years. The consumer price index has risen from 100 to 200,9. Even though the consumer price index has risen by 100,9 points, hon. members on that side of the House complain about the increase of 19,9 points in the postal tariff. Who in South Africa can still believe and take cognizance of what is raised in this House by hon. members on that side of the House when it comes to criticism of this nature?

If one went further, one would find that there were tariff reductions in 1974-’75. If one examined again the increase in the consumer price index, one would find that the last postal increase was in 1971. From that time until 1974-’75, there was a reduction in the postal tariffs, but in the consumer price index there has been a rise of slightly more than 30%. The tariffs were reduced by the Department of Posts and Telecommunications precisely in order to stimulate the economy, exactly what hon. members on that side of the House advocated. Now that the economy has been stimulated, and they are feeling the effect, hon. members on that side of the House want the Post Office to deplete its financial resources and then to subsidize them in order to stimulate the economy.

It is easy for the hon. member for Umhlanga to say that the increase in postage from four cents to five cents means an increase of 25%. Can an increase from four cents be anything other than one cent? Surely the price cannot be 4¼ cents. Surely the price must be increased by one cent, which unfortunately amounts to an increase of 25%. We must accept this and not quote percentages out of context. The things we emphasize should be seen in the right perspective.

The situation could be analysed from a different angle and the new postal tariff could be examined. We could look at what it entails and honestly ask ourselves whether our postal tariffs in South Africa are too high. The new ordinary postal tariffs will be five cents per 50 grams. The tariff of the country which is closest to South Africa, is that of the USA, viz. 14 cents. In England the tariff is 15 cents; in Australia, 20 cents; in France, 41 cents; in West Germany, 46 cents; and in Argentina, 71 cents. Now I want to ask hon. members on that side of the House to mention any country in the world which can be an example to South Africa, in spite of the so-called 25% increase, when it comes to the fixing of postal tariffs. The second most reasonable tariff in the world is that of Spain, viz. eight cents. Percentage-wise, Spain’s tariff—the second most reasonable, as far as we know—is 60% more than South Africa’s tariff.

As far as printed matter in envelopes is concerned—this will now cost five cents— South Africa is the third cheapest country in the world. In the United Kingdom one pays twelve cents. In the USA the tariffs are 14 cents, and in Belgium, 45 cents.

With regard to parcel post, we are the third cheapest country in the world with a tariff of 50 cents per kilogram. In England the tariff is R1,12; in the Netherlands, R1,93; in Australia, R2, and in Argentina, R3,72. I merely ask: What is the hon. members’ criterion when they criticize our price increases?

When we look at the geography of South Africa, it is very easy to see that we also have to contend with many other problems. Our post must be transported over much greater distances; it takes longer and therefore costs more. If we were to compare our tariffs with those of a country with a high population density such as the Netherlands, where the people live practically on top of one another, we would find that their postage is 640% higher than ours. In addition, we should bear in mind that our postal service is operated at a loss and that an average of 34 million more mail items were transported during the past two years. During the six months up to 30 September 1978, there was an increase of 68 million articles. In other words, in the space of six months there was an increase equalling the total increase during the previous two years. Therefore, if one suffers a loss on the service, surely one is going to suffer a greater loss on a greater turnover.

I want to dwell for a moment on telephone tariffs. Apart from the fact that we now enjoy particularly reasonable privileges in being able to phone at a reduction of two thirds or a third at certain times of the day or night, it is also true that South Africa and the USA are the cheapest countries in the world as far as telephone installation fees are concerned. The fees are R30 and R28 respectively, as opposed to the R112 in England, R93 in Germany and R700 in Argentina. We are also the cheapest country in the world as far as monthly telephone rental is concerned. Furthermore, we are the cheapest country in the world with regard to the cost of long distance telephone call units.

We do these things specifically in order to assist the poorer and less well-to-do non-White groups of South Africa.

When we decide to increase tariffs, we take the tremendous cost increases into consideration. The PFP also decided to increase their membership fees during the past four years, but if we want to increase the postage, there is an outcry. Even if those hon. members reduce their membership fees, they will receive no additional support whatsoever, whereas even with the increased postage, millions and millions of letters will still be added to the potential of our postal service.

It is very clear that what the hon. member advocated today was that the profits made on telecommunications should be poured in to make up for the losses on postal services. He therefore wants us to Subsidize postal services without setting any limit to the subsidy. If we should do so, we should have to increase our telephone tariffs too at a later stage in order to cover the services which operate at a loss. I believe that the hon. member made a very irresponsible speech.

At this stage I want to refer to one particular aspect, i.e. how the Post Office concentrates on a careful planning of services and tries to make them coincide with building operations. Some of the members who spoke before me also referred to this. It is easier said than done, of course, but we should remember that houses are built sporadically. If houses are built in blocks, it is much easier to find a solution to this problem. In order to show the goodwill and the spirit of the Post Office in meeting the rapidly increasing need and the anticipated explosion in the demand for telephone services by the non-White groups of South Africa, I want to mention Mitchell’s Plain as example.

What information was available to the Post Office when telephone services had to be planned for Mitchell’s Plain? The only facts they had at their disposal was that it was a barren expanse where 40 000 houses, which would accommodate 0,25 million people, would be built within 8 to 10 years and that telephones had to be provided for these people. Who could determine in advance what the need for telephone services in Mitchell’s Plain would be? What did the Post Office do in this regard? In 1977 they launched an intensive research programme by trying to test what this need would be. In 1978 the same investigation was extended to other Coloured areas. Unfortunately I cannot dwell on this matter.

It is interesting to note that the information available to us at that time indicated that this population would consist mainly of tenants and that only 6 000 houses would be built per annum. Upon investigation, therefore, the need for telephones was put at 45%. But all at once, virtually without warning, the rate of building operations was accelerated from 6 000 to 12 000 houses per annum. Furthermore it was suddenly decided that the majority of the inhabitants would not be tenants, but house-owners. The need therefore had to be revaluated, and it was found that it would no longer be 45%, but 70%. At that time the Post Office did not even know where the railway line would be. In other words, where was the Post Office to begin? The Post Office realized that if it had to begin in the usual way by constructing a building, equipping it properly and making available 10 000 lines, it would take five to six years, but within two years thousands of people would be living there. Consequently the Post Office at once produced a number of mobile CP24 automatic exchanges and immediately made 2 200 lines available there. Nevertheless there is already a waiting list of 1 100, which will increase tremendously in the time ahead. Even at that stage, the Post Office was prepared to invest R2 million in that area in order to meet the need for immediate service. The Post Office went further and determined that 31 000 telephones would be required at Mitchell’s Plain by 1985. Incidentally, I may mention that at Atlantis, 13 400 telephones will be required at the same date. Consequently it has been decided to establish a permanent automatic exchange of 10 000 lines at a cost of R4,3 million at Mitchell’s Plain by 1981. In this year’s budget provision has already been made for a building complex at a cost of R450 000 to cover it. This is what is being done.

I want to examine the planning. The normal overhead installation of telephone wires for an ordinary plot at Mitchell’s Plain costs R30. The overhead wires are unsightly and with their maintenance over a period of five years, the costs are doubled. The usual, or more modern, method of laying underground cables to the road means a cost of R60 per plot. This would mean that just laying the cables would cost R2,4 million to make 40 000 telephones available at Mitchell’s Plain. The Post Office then designed a unique system, and also convinced the Cape Town city council to accept that it is a sound and acceptable system, whereby cables are laid right across plots and together with the foundations when houses are built. This would protect the cables from damage and also ensure lower maintenance costs. It would cost R22 per plot to lay such a cable and the total cost would be a mere R880 000. Through good planning, therefore, the Post Office took the initiative in saving a potential R1,5 million on this simple cable project alone.

I think that this budget is well thought out, fair and reasonable. Taking into consideration inflation and the rising costs which we have to contend with every day, it is reasonable and fair. With this budget, I believe, we are at present making provision for the most modern electronic equipment in the Post Office for the improvement of the service. I believe that the Post Office is establishing an extensive infrastructure which will keep pace with the phenomenal rise in the demand for telephones. I believe that the management, administration and finances of the Post Office are sound and that the public has the greatest appreciation for the service which passes almost unnoticed, but which is so essential in the interests of South Africa and its future. Therefore, I want to pledge my fullest support for the approval of this budget.

Mr. Speaker, although I have only 10 minutes at my disposal, I wish to say something to the hon. member for Durbanville. He waxed quite eloquent about the fact that the postal tariffs in South Africa were among the lowest in the world. However, in the first place one should not only take into account postal tariffs, because more or less the same argument applies to all other commodities. Therefore one cannot regard this one item in isolation. One must also consider all the other commodities, and then one must also consider the difference in the real income of the ordinary man overseas and of the ordinary man in South Africa. If we compare the income of people in those countries with the income of people in South Africa, we shall see that the picture is probably quite different.

That the services of the Post Office are so much better and so much more effective, in comparison with those of the past 10 years, is beyond dispute, and here I am referring in particular to our telecommunication services. We agree wholeheartedly with the hon. the Minister, who has stated that this may be ascribed to the conscientiousness of the Post Office staff and the resultant high productivity. The Post Office staff, from the most senior to the most junior, deserve our sincere thanks and appreciation, not only for the service they are rendering, but also for the example they are setting to other persons. In the short time that this portfolio has been the responsibility of the hon. the Minister, he has of course also made his contribution. We are therefore also indebted to him for that. Much of the content of this budget has already been described as a forward step, a step in the right direction—and we agree with that; but if it had not been for the high percentage increase of some of the tariffs, we might have been able to support this budget. Then we might have been able to give the hon. the Minister full marks today and to tell him that it was a very good budget. However, it is not so much the increases that we are opposed to. It is the high percentage of the increases that we regard as inflationary. I therefore find myself in a very difficult position, because although I very much want to penalize the hon. the Minister, I know that I cannot hold him solely responsible for the position in which he finds himself. His predecessors must, of course, accept their part of the responsibility. The problem arose from the fact that certain of these tariffs had not been increased since 1971—as the hon. member for Durbanville stated—and also from the fact that other tariffs had not been increased since 1975. The door was open and the horse had already bolted! It is all very well to boast from time to time that tariffs have not been or are not being increased. This is a very popular thing to be able to say, but when one is confronted with the bare truth and the increases become unavoidable, there is no alternative. Large increases must then be asked for. It is for that reason that we have this increase of approximately 13% in the budget before us.

We now come to the question of postage. Would it not have been better rather to have effected minor increases, particularly in view of the fact that the annual report shows that there has been a loss of at least R30 million? Why did we not introduce a half-cent increase in postage a year or two ago?

Unpractical!

It may be unpractical, but in the meantime it is not good business to go bankrupt before trying to save oneself. The hon. member for Sunnyside and the hon. member for Durbanville referred to the fact that our air mail tariff had previously been reduced from five cents to four cents. At a time when we knew that the postal service was running at a loss, that one item was reduced. The public was used to paying five cents, but after it had been reduced to four cents for a period, we now find that it is again being increased to five cents while the tariff on ordinary mail is also being increased. I assume that to a certain extent that reduction contributed to the loss we are dealing with at the moment.

†It is all very well to say, as the hon. the Minister has said, “that we want to assist as much as possible in the revival of the national economy by postponing increases as long as possible”. It reminds me of somebody with a toothache. He knows he has to have the tooth extracted, but he keeps on postponing and when reality strikes him, as it is going to strike us later during the year, what happens then? What is going to happen to our national economy? With second-class mail gone, just think of all the millions of accounts and statements every month which will cost five cents each instead of three cents to mail. This will not revive the economy; it must of necessity retard the economy. Many concerns that depend on mail orders and services, correspondence schools and colleges, and local authorities with millions of monthly accounts and letters will not absorb these increases; they will pass them on. Once again there will be less money in circulation. The hon. the Minister and all hon. members will get a shock when at the next election they send out their manifestos and election literature. If one sends out one’s manifesto now, one can mail 100 copies at three cents each and if one posts them before 01h00 one gets a reduction of 10% and the cost will come to R2,70. From October this year, however, it will cost one R5, and if one gets a reduction of 20%, it will cost one R4.

Will this affect politicians too?

Yes, politicians will have to pay. The difference comes to R1,30 per 100, and it should be borne in mind that one sends out tens of thousands of manifestos. If a businessman is going to send out 10 000 circulars, it will cost him R130 more.

But that is a waste of money.

We want equal time on television.

I know sometimes it is a waste of money, but it has to be done. [Interjections.]

The hon. the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications reminds me of a cricketer who is not prepared to go for single runs; he wants to go for a six every time. I think, however, that the budget is hitting the economy for a six. [Interjections.]

There is another item that worries us. I notice from the Postmaster-General’s report that money transfer services are operated at a loss of R2,8 million. I do not think that this uneconomic service which is only being used by certain people because they need the service should be subsidized. If the rates on postal services should be increased, then surely this service should also bear a fair percentage of the costs.

*I now leave the budget there to deal briefly with something nearer home. I note from the report that during the past 10 years, R223,7 million was spent on buildings and accommodation as well as on maintenance. This is a sign of growth and we are convinced that functional buildings obviously contribute to the success and the convenience of the officials and also to the rendering of a satisfactory service to the public. The city of Port Elizabeth is the largest city in South Africa …

Where do you hear that?

I meant that it was the fifth largest. Well, actually it should be the largest.

It will still become the largest.

But if one looks at the Post Office there, one definitely cannot believe that it is the fifth largest. In this budget there is an amount of R363 million for capital works, and I was really hoping that there would be a small amount that would serve to pave the way for a new post office in the fifth largest city. The present old, historical building is perhaps the most ineffective post office in our country. This post office has five entrances from three different streets. If one wants to go from one section to another, one must first leave the building and enter through another entrance. On a rainy day one is sopping wet by the time one has finished one’s business. It is known that this post office has acquired a stand with a view to the construction of a new post office building, but we all know that it will be some time before a new post office is built. I do want to point out—it is generally known—that the city council intends to take over the existing old building and to incorporate it into its civic centre complex. At the moment, it is actually retarding the planning for the future. Although this development will take place in stages, it will be a good thing if the city council can have this old building available during the second and third stages of development so that it can be included in the civic centre complex, but then I fear that we must request even at this early stage that the post office should start paving the way for the erection of a new post office on its new stand.

Mr. Speaker, I am afraid my time has expired. I only trust that when we convene here again, we shall see an amount set aside in the budget for a new main post office in Port Elizabeth.

Mr. Speaker, I am very sorry that the hon. member for Hillbrow is not present I do not think we can allow what he said to go by unnoticed. Hon. members on this side of the House have already dealt with him, but unfortunately I cannot leave him at that. I am not very concerned about what he said except to say that it is strange to me that in the years when the Post Office announced no increase, the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications and the Postmaster-General were the heroes of the people and of the Opposition parties. I fear that if the hon. the Minister had not announced the odd increase, the expressions of praise by hon. members on that side of the House would simply have been endless. The statement has been made that one should not first go bankrupt before one decides to increase tariffs. But surely the Post Office does not do this. The Post Office announces tariff increases for certain services specifically because it does not wish to go bankrupt in the future. This “overkill” story of the hon. member for Umhlanga is the biggest nonsense under the sun. He does not even have the 1980-’81 budget before him but he has already decided what the surplus is going to be for 1980-’81. I simply cannot understand this. I must concede one thing to the hon. member, however, and that is that I think that everyone sitting up there in the Press Gallery must tell the public that as far as this debate is concerned, the NRP is in fact the official Opposition. [Interjections.] I think we must congratulate the hon. member for Umhlanga on his amendment, particularly if we compare it with the amendment by the hon. member for Hillbrow. Perhaps the hon. member for Pinelands would furnish me with a reply in this regard because before beginning my speech I must first get some clarity from the official Opposition as to what they really mean by their amendment.

Why did you not listen?

I listened very carefully and I also read the amendment a few times. Perhaps the hon. member for Pinelands can help us, because I think he is the official Opposition’s next speaker in this debate. Do they mean by the first part of their amendment that they are totally opposed to increases?

I shall reply to you on that score.

I want to know now.

No, wait.

The first part of the amendment implies that they do not approve this budget because the tariff increases place an unnecessary burden on the public. In other words, I take it that the significance of this is that they are totally opposed to any tariff increases. The hon. member need only say “yes” or “no”.

Yes.

The hon. member says “yes”, viz. that he is totally opposed to tariff increases of any nature. If that is the case, we can ask the question: “Is the official Opposition in favour of the Post Office being run on business principles?”

Yes.

We heard a very clear “yes”, but as far as tariff increases are concerned we had only a faint nod of the head. But I think it was good enough to allow me to take my argument further. It is extremely difficult to analyse a budget of R1 199 905 350 in the course of 20 to 25 minutes, and then eventually to decide whether it is a good budget or not. I am still sorry that the hon. member for Hillbrow is not present, because my whole argument revolves around him. I want to drive him into a comer so that the public at large and we in this House may know that the hon. member has no understanding whatsoever of the financial control and the management of the Post Office on business principles. When one looks at this budget and divides it into four components, the first is an expenditure component of R808 million. When we look at this expenditure component we know that it is essential for a number of reasons. In the first place it is essential so that telecommunications and postal facilities may be possible in the densely populated areas, in the far-flung comers of South Africa and with virtually all the countries of the world. I do not intend analysing this expenditure owing to a lack of information. But what do we know? We know that this House has a Select Committee which investigates in depth the expenditure of the Department of Posts and Telecommunications.

We have considered the reports of the Auditor-General over the past number of years and have reached one conclusion, namely that nowhere in the reports of the Select Committee or in the reports of the Auditor General is any evidence to be found that the expenditure incurred by the Post Office has not been in the best interests of the Post Office and the State. Perhaps the hon. member for Pinelands can again reply to the question I wanted to put to the hon. member for Hillbrow. Does the hon. member for Pinelands accept on behalf of the PFP that, looking at the pattern of expenditure of the Post Office, that expenditure contains not a hint of evidence which could have caused the increase in tariffs, taking into account that we exclude all external factors such as the increase in the price of fuel, etc.? Does the hon. member for Pinelands accept that according to these reports there is no hint of a need for tariff increases, owing to internal expenditure? Unfortunately I get no reply from that side of the House. Therefore I must proceed to my second statement.

Make your own speech.

I am making my speech but I get no replies. The second component of this budget is the revenue component of R884 million and the expectation that we are going to achieve this goal of R884 million depends basically on three factors. The first is that the quality of the service must be good. The second is that the service must be reliable, and the third factor—and it is an important one—is that there must be an economically acceptable tariff structure. Now I want to know from the hon. official Opposition, and perhaps the hon. member for Pinelands can reply to me—it does not seem to me he has any more replies—with regard to the question whether there has been any evidence in the past that the tariff structure of the Post Office has maintained to date, is not economically justifiable. The hon. member need only answer “yes” or “no”. It is not a difficult question, nor do I believe that it has a difficult answer. I think I had better reply on his behalf. There is no evidence whatsoever that the tariff structure of the Post Office has not been on an economic basis to date, on a basis of business principles. Consequently, when we have to consider the history of the Post Office in this regard, I agree with the hon. member for Port Elizabeth Central when he states that we cannot give the Post Office full marks in all respects. However, I believe that in all three of the factors as regards quality, reliability and the economic aspects of tariffs, the Post Office passes cum laude.

I note that the hon. member for Hillbrow is now back in his seat. It is as well that he has returned at this stage. I want him to listen to what I am going to say now. The third component of this budget is the capital requirements of the Post Office, capital requirements amounting to R363 million. This amount is vital for two reasons. Capital expenditure is essential to ensure that cable networks, telephone exchanges and transmission systems are available to meet the constant demand for telephone services. Now the hon. member for Hillbrow must tell us whether he accepts the principle … Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Hillbrow is not listening to me. Does the hon. member for Hillbrow accept the principle that the Post Office must incur capital investments in order to meet the demand for telephone services in South Africa? The hon. member need only answer “yes” or “no”. The hon. member is not listening to me. Therefore I had better reply myself. Apparently those hon. members are now totally bereft of answers. [Interjections.] It is of the greatest importance that South Africa should continue to invest capital in its telephone networks. This is necessary for two reasons. The first, as I have already said, is that the Post Office must meet the demand for telephone services. The second reason is that the Post Office must keep abreast of technical developments in world telecommunications. If we do not do so, we shall be unable to allow the consumer in South Africa to share the modern services that are necessary. If we do not keep abreast of these technological developments it will not be possible for us to link up with all the other countries world-wide in telecommunications. For these reasons it is important that we incur this capital expenditure.

Now, however, we come to the important aspect that this capital must be obtained from specific sources. This is the fourth component of this budget. There are only two sources. The one is loan capital and the other is selfgenerated capital, capital that has to be derived from the tariff structure. Now the hon. member for Hillbrow has made a very neat sum here. He took the surplus of R76 million, deducted the expected R53 million from the increased structure and got the sum of R23 million. He then said that with that R23 million the Post Office could meet all its financial obligations. However, he has clean forgotten about the sum of close to R20 million required for the repayment of the loans from which standard supplies must also be purchased. He has failed completely to take that into account. As the hon. member for Durbanville said, the Post Office now has to operate its total budget, amounting to approximately R1 199 million, on an expected surplus of R3 million.

What the hon. member has failed to bear in mind, however, is that we are now faced with the capital deficit of R52 million for self-generated finance. The hon. member has not made the slightest effort to tell the hon. the Minister or the Postmaster-General where that R52 million can be obtained. The hon. member implies that that money must be borrowed. The hon. member then discussed the desirability of 50% self-generated as against 50% loan capital in this House as justification for his statement that the Post Office ought not to have increased tariffs at this stage.

In my opinion hon. members on that side of the House must accept this principle of 50% self-generated as against 50% loan capital. If they accept it there is only one way to maintain it, viz. by way of adjusting the tariff structure accordingly. I am not going to use individual tariff adjustments at this point to motivate from this side of the House why these increases are essential at this stage. I do not think it is possible to do this in that way.

I am going to discuss another aspect of the budget, viz. certain trends. I think the hon. member for Hillbrow will agree with me that in considering a budget based on business principles, one follows and analyses certain trends. I should like to consider a few trends in this Post Office budget. The first is the trend relating to the ratio of income to assets. Looking at what the situation is now since the last tariff increase we see that it has weakened from 5,5% to 3,3%. This represents a deterioration of 40% in the yield asset ratio. This indicates just one thing and that is that it must be rectified, and the only way in which this can be done is to look at the tariffs. The second trend is that the operating surplus has weakened by 35% as against the operating expenditure over the past two years. The operating surplus has weakened by 12% as against the net assets over the past two years and the long-term loan repayment as against the net asset ratio has worsened over the past two years from 43% to 52,7% this year. If we make a very simple calculation— not as faulty as the arguments of the hon. member for Hillbrow—one gets two figures. Looking purely at the long-term loan/asset ratio, what it amounts to is that it is vital for the Post Office to increase the tariff structure by a basic amount of 12%. If it is not increased by 12% we shall be faced with the problem that within the next two years the Post Office could go bankrupt. Therefore this is a matter of basic necessity. Taking into account the external factors over which the Post Office had no control whatsoever and making another calculation, one gets a figure of 15%. This means that from the point of view of business principles the Post Office was justified in increasing its tariffs by between 12% and 15%. It is very clear that the Post Office has set the figure at the absolute minimum, viz. 12,6%. However, the Post Office has had no praise whatsoever from hon. members on that side of the House for its good work and conservative approach in this regard.

At the moment the Post Office is probably on the threshold of the greatest technological challenge in its history, in that it is starting to install electronic exchanges simultaneously with other countries in the world. However, it is not merely the installation of these exchanges that is important but also the manufacture of these electronic exchanges. This challenge entails very wide implications because once we have taken this step it is important that we should ensure that we remain in the electronic telecommunications industry.

There are three requirements which the Post Office will have to meet to ensure that it stays in the industry. The first is that the Post Office will have to ensure that it has the necessary trained engineers available in South Africa so that they can handle this technology and develop it further. In this regard I should like to refer to item No. 1.12.1.3 on page 3 of this budget where an amount of R20 000 per annum is reserved for a chair in telecommunications at the University of Pretoria. In my opinion we must take cognizance of the farsightedness with which the Post Office has accepted this implementation of electronic systems by making timely provision and making their contribution towards the training of professional telecommunications engineers so that these people will in fact be available in the future.

In the second place it is important in my opinion that if we want to remain in this industry, the Post Office will have to be in a position to manufacture our own strategic micro-electronic components. Under item No. 1.2.8 an amount of R1,8 million is set aside for the establishment, in co-operation with the private sector, of a micro-electronics manufacturing centre. The name of this centre is SAMES. In my opinion this attests to a fine piece of planning. This micro-electronic manufacturing centre has been planned in such a way that its date of inception coincides with the manufacturing programme of electronic systems for South Africa. In this regard too the Post Office has already made arrangements and preparations to ensure that once they have taken this step they will be able to remain in the industry. In the third place it is essential that when we train these engineers, there has to be a catchment pool for them in South Africa. If there is no such catchment pool where they can satisfy their technological ideals in research and in development we are going to lose them, and if we lose these people we will not be able to remain in this industry. In this regard the Post Office has decided, as the hon. the Minister announced, to establish an electronic institute called Potelin. It is a centre where research and development, integrated with industry, will consider the future of the electronics industry in South Africa. This centre is the brainchild of our Postmaster-General. We must take cognizance of the fact that this is probably one of the most important institutes that has ever been established in the engineering industry in South Africa. We must convey a sincere message of congratulation to our Postmaster-General for this farsightedness he has displayed. Potelin is far more than just an institute in which industry and the consumer can come together; it is also the heart where the technological arteries of the private sector, the consumer, the academics and the research institutes can come together. We hope that the ultimate aim of this institute will be to provide a channel whereby the research and development carried out in the private sector can be channelled back to the academics for training purposes and also for basic research. In the second place it must also be the contact point where the basic researcher and the academics can find a short cut to the industries so that we can bring together and implement the fruit of the work by our industries, our researchers and our academics as soon as possible in practice.

Mr. Speaker, like other hon. members who spoke before me, I want to congratulate the hon. the Minister on his appointment and on the introduction of his first budget. I want to wish him well in the important work that he has undertaken to do and at the same time I want to direct that comment to the Postmaster-General and his staff as well as to the Administration in general.

When one comes to matters concerning either the Railways or the Post Office, and particularly the latter, one finds it difficult to decide what to leave out because it touches every one of us: It touches business and commerce, the private householder, the rich and the poor; it is something which has to do with the ordinary man in the street. It is something that comes into his home and goes out of his home, into his office and out of his office. The hon. the Minister carries an enormous responsibility here. I think that one thing is abundantly clear in this debate and that is that it is surely true to say that no one likes increases in tariffs, or likes introducing such increases. The hon. the Minister himself was at pains to make that clear. The point that we on these benches have tried to make is that one has to consider not only the increases in tariffs needed in order to run a business, or in this case the Post Office, but also the timing of such increases. I think that this is a point that has been overlooked by speaker after speaker in the debate today.

The hon. member for Port Elizabeth Central and I do not often agree, as he will readily concede, but in the Post Office debate last year we agreed on one particular matter, to which I will come in a moment, and this year again I find myself in agreement with him in this particular debate. If one looks back over the debates that have taken place on the Post Office budget, one will find that, while Opposition speakers have asked questions and given warnings, they have again and again received assurances from the other side of the House and the previous Minister that no increases were justified or called for because the Post Office could maintain their budget and come out on top. Let us examine the present situation. There is a new Minister and I believe that this new Minister has had a very careful look at the situation and has said with hind-sight that tariffs must go up. We all know, of course, that the hon. the Minister does not make that kind of decision on his own. He does it in consultation and after receiving advice. Indeed, the whole Cabinet is involved. But, with hind-sight, he said tariffs must go up; they must go up by more than 12%.

It is foresight!

No, it is with hindsight. If the hon. the Minister had held that position last year, I guarantee—and of course the hon. the Minister will say “not at all”— that tariffs would have gone up then as well, because that is the situation.

The only other matter I want to raise in this connection is that there is now a definite confusion in the minds of the public about whether or not there is going to be an increase in tariffs. The hon. the Minister says that he hopes that it will not be necessary to effect increases before 1 October 1979 but cannot give any guarantee that this will be so. In other words, the tariff increases may come earlier or they may come later. I want to ask the hon. the Minister whether he can give us any guarantee at all in this regard, because if we listen to the hon. member for Sunnyside, who I see is now leaving the House, probably because he does not want to listen any more, he said … [Interjections.] Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Sunnyside, who was going to Sunnyside or somewhere, has now turned back. I cannot quite discover whether he is coming or going. He asked how we knew that there was going to be an increase before 1 October. Can that hon. member, however, give us any guarantee that there will be no increase in tariffs before 1 October? [Interjections.]

The hon. the Minister told you so.

Come, come, please. The hon. member talks too much and says nothing. [Interjections.] That is the problem. He talks too much and says nothing. [Interjections.] In his introductory speech the hon. the Minister himself said he could not give us any guarantee. We must therefore say that this is inflationary, because what will happen? The ordinary consumer, the ordinary member of the public, cannot make any provision for possible increases but the business houses can and will. They will go along on the supposition that there is going to be an increase, and immediately prices will go up. [Interjections.] Of course they will make provision for this!

That is a shocking statement.

That hon. member says it is a shocking statement but any business has to make provision for increases.

Mr. Speaker, may I put a question to the hon. member?

No, I have a very limited amount of time. That hon. member took a very long time earlier on to say nothing. So forgive me, but I cannot answer any questions now.

He wants to go to tea.

All right, he may go to tea if he wants to. I put it to the hon. the Minister that he himself made the following statement in his speech, and he did so with reference to the Franzsen Commission recommendation—

In other words, it is a guideline and not a hard and fast rule. The Government has obviously accepted this as policy, and I must say the hon. the Minister looked very good saying that on television last night. The fact of the matter is, however, that this is a guideline that can be adjusted under certain circumstances. I therefore want to suggest to the hon. the Minister that we are experiencing very difficult circumstances right now and that any increases in tariffs which are going to increase costs throughout the country are not well-timed at this juncture in our history. Therefore the hon. the Minister ought to have used his own judgment about the guideline laid down by the Franzsen Commission. He should have said that this is only a guideline and that he would be adjusting figures in the light of the overall circumstances in South Africa. We need to boost the economy and not to depress it further.

I want to congratulate the hon. the Minister on his comments, earlier in his speech, on management and staff. He sets himself certain goals and then he tells us how he is going to try and achieve those goals. One particular goal is—

I believe this to be a fundamental objective, and I wish the hon. the Minister every success in the achievement of this objective because if he does that it would, I believe, bring about further savings. Any organization that seeks to make that its objective, and succeeds in attaining that objective, must cut costs and must be able to produce the services at those reduced costs. As I have said, I wish him well as far as that is concerned, and I hope this will apply to management throughout the country. Towards those ends, I believe that decentralization is a very important step indeed. I am referring, for example, to the appointment of area managers, a reduction in the size of undertakings and consequently more effective overall control right throughout the country. This could only be a very good thing for the Post Office. I said earlier that there are so many aspects of this particular budget that can be discussed. However, we have a new Minister, and because this is his first performance in this portfolio, I want to use this very first opportunity to bring a matter to his attention, a matter that I believe is very important indeed. During the debate of last year the then Minister replied to a question and referred to the now hon. Minister. He said that he was glad that the now hon. Minister was present to listen to the debate because he would later realize how difficult it was to be the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications and the Minister of Social Welfare and Pensions.

You might as well put the question to me.

One does not get worthwhile answers from that hon. member. The hon. the Minister has now lost the portfolio of Social Welfare and Pensions. [Interjections.] I think I should rather say that he has given it up. Perhaps that is a better way of putting it. Instead of Social Welfare and Pensions he has taken up Sport and Recreation. Well, one can have all kinds of fun about sport and posts and telegraphs but I shall not waste time on that; unfortunately I do not have time for that. Nevertheless, I am sorry that the hon. the Minister is no longer in charge of the portfolio of Social Welfare and Pensions; we got along quite well.

When one talks about the increase in tariffs for very ordinary matters such as letters, telegrammes and telephone calls, one should realize that obviously it is not only business and commerce that will be affected—I have already referred to that aspect—but the private sector will also feel the consequences. I now want to turn to the effects which the increases will have on the private sector. As far as Post Office pensioners are concerned I, and other hon. members on this side too, have over the last five years again and again made a special plea for those who went on pension before 1 July 1973. When I raised the matter last year, the then Minister was not able to give the satisfaction for which I had asked. The hon. the Minister of Finance, however, announced in his budget speech that there would be a 10% increase. For that we were very grateful. Many of us—I am sure the hon. the Minister as well—received letters from pensioners expressing their appreciation.

I regret to say that once again one has been inundated with appeals from Post Office pensioners. I think their appeal is justified. In recent days I received a letter from not merely a pensioner, but from the Post Office Pensioners’ Club. The letter was written by a group of pensioners particularly from the Cape area who meet on a regular basis to find fellowship with each other and to talk about the old days, the years and years of service they have given the Post Office. The one thing about which they talk again and again is the very real problem of making ends meet, so much so that they have addressed a letter not only to the hon. the Minister—I am sure he is aware of this—but to the hon. the Prime Minister as well. They make a number of points which they have asked me to make in this debate as well, and I do it gladly because I believe they have a cause.

The very people who are going to be affected by these tariff increases are the people who are pleading for a square deal. We must bear in mind the irony that a Post Office pensioner now begins to say to himself: “I can no longer afford a telephone because it is costing me too much.” The employees of the Post Office do not have to pay telephone rental; the pensioner does. The pensioner does not get a vacation bonus. We are grateful for the improvements which will come the way of the Post Office staff. We welcome those improvements, but the pensioner is not going to receive those improvements. The pensioners have served the Post Office for years prior to 1973 and now they are trying to survive. Last year they received an increase of 10% after years of struggle, but then immediately thereafter came the introduction of a 4% general sales tax. We all know that since then the cost of living has risen even further. Very low salaries were paid to many of these pensioners in the past with the result that the pensions they enjoy now are very, very small. We request the hon. the Minister to take a look at this situation urgently. He should take a look at what happened in July 1973 when increases were made and a new dispensation came into being. He must try to influence the hon. the Minister of Finance so that the pre- 1973 Post Office pensioner can again believe that even though he is on pension and is no longer working full-time, he has not been forgotten. The irony of it all is that the very people who have served the Post Office so well over many years, are now the very ones who are going to be penalized by the increases announced by the hon. the Minister. The aged are the ones who send birthday cards and Christmas cards when most of us forget to do so. They are concerned about their grandchildren, with whome one has to keep contact by telephone and by means of telegrams, and for these they will now have to pay more. All I am asking is that when we look at the increase in tariffs, we also look at the plight of Post Office pensioners, particularly those who have served the Post Office so well prior to 1973. We believe that there are adequate resources within the Post Office itself and in its workings to finance itself and to keep its head above water. We believe that the timing of the announcement in this budget of the Post Office’s increased tariffs is bad, and that is why we cannot support it. We ask the hon. the Minister to particularly keep in mind those pensioners I have referred to.

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin with the general statement that we on this side of the House also deeply regret the fact that circumstances and the hard realities have compelled the Post Office to announce a few tariff increases. We also regret it, but we are dealing with a reality. We on this side of the House as well as the Post Office must consider the realities of the situation.

It is remarkable that Opposition members welcome and approve of the salary increases, but fail to tell us where that money is to come from. The Opposition calls for a further expansion of telephone services, particularly in rural areas, without saying where the money for it is to come from. After all, the usual escalation in the cost of equipment and fuel, inter alia, must be met. Besides, the increases are not so dramatic that they will have any adverse effect in future. Since these tariff increases are only coming into operation in October 1979, everybody has the opportunity of organizing his affairs so as to be prepared to take positive steps to counter the adverse effects when they make themselves felt. I shall refer again to a few of these matters later in my speech.

The hon. member for Pinelands, who has just resumed his seat, spoke about the so-called wrong timing. Was that really necessary? Is one to go under before stretching out one’s hand to be saved? Is one to drown before trying to save oneself? Surely that is the situation we are dealing with.

He went on to make a plea on behalf of pensioners. He can rest assured that all of us on this side of the House are greatly sympathetic towards the pensioners in our country. He is trying to make a little propaganda from it. He probably hopes that he will also make the headlines in the newspapers. The real sympathy for pensioners is to be found on this side of the House, however. We need not talk about it, for this side of the House has always proved it.

Since obtaining its autonomy, and particularly since the early ’seventies, the Post Office has gone through a period of unprecedented development and progress. It is true that the Post Office was the Cinderella of a decade ago, but it is also true that the Post Office has grown into a financial giant. Any business enterprise envies this successful business concern today. Telecommunications is one of the most rapidly growing branches of technology in the whole world today. Systems which were only dreamed of a few years ago have become general practice in our day. I do not want to go any further into that. Hon. members on this side of the House have already said a great deal in this regard. Just imagine what the utilization of the satellite, for example, means to us in this area.

By means of thorough planning and of organization and administration the Post-master-General has evolved a system of management which is bearing fruit. I believe it would be correct to say that good management has become a tradition in the Post Office. With a motivated staff, thorough planning and the successful application of its financial resources, it has been able to wipe out the telephone backlog to a large extent, and with the aid of foreign loans and money obtained from its own resources, it has been able to solve those problems. 82% of the revenue of the Post Office is derived from telecommunication services, while the postal services is the area where the greatest losses are sustained and which has to be subsidized by the telecommunications sector as a result. The following is an example of how profitable the telecommunication service is. I read in the Financial Mail that the J. G. Strydom Tower handles 7 000 overseas calls every day. Calculated at an average of six minutes per call and at 4 cents per second, that service yields a daily revenue of R100 000 or R3 million per month. Although the capital investment in telecommunications is very high, therefore, it is also true that it is one of the major sources of revenue of the Post Office. The major part of the capital investment is meant for expansion and modernization, however, and in this regard I call to mind the third antenna at Hartebeeshoek, for example, which is to be erected at an estimated cost of R4,8 million.

The next matter which I should like to touch on is the question of self-service and agents. Postal services here, as in all other countries, are labour-intensive and consequently not profitable. The loss in this field this year is estimated at R38,3 million. In order to keep tariffs low, for it is in the national interests, the Post Office is trying to find ways and means of rationalization and saving. One such method is the development of a distinctive self-service centre. I want to ask the hon. the Minister to tell us how successful the self-service offices are. Such self-service offices were erected as far back as 1973 and in 1974 in the Alberton and Germiston areas respectively. According to the annual report there are 19 such units already. Therefore, my question to the hon. the Minister is whether they have proved a success and whether he intends to continue with the system. I should also like to know whether the facilities which were originally offered in these self-service offices are still being kept up. I am talking of scales with which one could weigh things oneself, of machines providing change, mail-boxes with keys, stamp vending machines, etc.

Last year the hon. the Minister’s predecessor said it had been found that agents were being used in Europe for providing full postal services. This system has definite advantages and I believe it ought to be closely investigated and tried out. I am thinking for example of a developing residential area, where a shopping centre or a café soon appears, long before any other business concern is established there. The owner of such a shopping centre or cafe will, I am sure, be only too pleased to run such an agency on a commission basis. A system like that has obvious advantages. It eliminates the provision of costly, separate accommodation. It provides a service in sparsely populated areas, where it would certainly not pay to create separate accommodation. But such an agency would not only be a solution for sparsely populated areas. It would also provide a solution in developed areas. In densely populated urban areas such well-situated points could also be used to provide this service. It is usually the kind of shop which is open for long hours and which could consequently render an excellent service to the public.

Public telephones are already available at shops like these. However, I believe we should expand this service even further, because the telephone there is under surveillance and the possibility of malicious damage is therefore almost completely eliminated. For the Post Office it is inexpensive and financially advantageous, while the businessman can also derive obvious financial benefits from it.

I should like to know how far this matter has been investigated and what the hon. the Minister and the postal administration have in mind in this regard.

There is another matter which I should like to dwell on for a moment I should like to express my gratitude today for the great breakthrough which has been achieved with the so-called Operation Commando on the Witwatersrand. This carefully planned, purposeful attempt was aimed at overcoming the chronic problem situation in respect of telephone services on the Witwatersrand, a problem situation which had existed for years and sometimes threatened to get out of hand and to plunge the whole telecommunication system into chaos, and which had to be solved in one way or another. That was a problem situation which, I am sure, has been the cause of many of my grey hairs as well. Because of the implementation of Operation Commando, the waiting list for telephones on the Witwatersrand has shrunk from 35 344 to 8 556. I do not believe it would be wrong of me to speak on behalf of all hon. members from the Witwatersrand. We are all greatly indebted to this task force of technical staff and auxiliary technical staff, together with a large number of non-White technical staff, who came to the Witwatersrand on a voluntary basis to offer their services there. In some cases those people were away from their homes for three months, and in many cases for up to 12 months, in order to render that service on the Witwatersrand. That shows a very commendable readiness to service. To all of them, as well as to those who remained behind, to work in their own areas while their comrades were helping us out, I say thank you very much. Having now expressed my gratitude to them, I am also worried. I am worried because the hon. the Minister expressed the fear yesterday that the waiting list for telephones on the Witwatersrand was growing. On the one hand the hon. the Minister ascribes it to the expected growth tendency, a tendency which could lead to an increased demand for telephone services, as well as a growing demand for telephone services in Black areas. I have no objection to “Operation Soweto”, which has already been embarked upon, because I know it is essential.

I want to urge the hon. the Minister not to allow “Operation Witwatersrand” to fall behind. If it is at all possible, the hon. the Minister should allow these two operations to be carried out simultaneously. Residents of the Witwatersrand must please not find themselves in the same situation as a decade ago, because they cannot afford it. South Africa cannot afford it either that the Witwatersrand should once more find itself in the situation in which it was 10 years ago. For that reason I want to appeal to the hon. the Minister very urgently to do everything that is humanly possible in this regard to avoid that situation.

As regards another aspect—it is more on the positive side—I inquired as to the ways in which the Post Office has endeavoured to save fuel. Now we can quite justifiably claim that the more extensive telephone service all over the country reduces the number of journeys and is consequently a fuel-saving measure in itself. As an example one can simply mention that no factory could dream of conducting its business without a good telephone service. A businessman can do business over large distances every day simply by using a telephone or a telex. Instead of flying from Johannesburg to Cape Town, which costs R150, an industrialist can do business over the telephone or the telex service at a greatly reduced price and without any loss of valuable working hours.

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The Post Office makes a positive attempt to consume fuel economically and to save it wherever possible. The Post Office now uses 13 000 motor vehicles, power generators and heavy mechanical aids which consume approximately 2,33 million litres of petrol and diesel per month. Approximately 8 000 sites are visited daily for the installation, maintenance and transfer of telephones, telexes and other services.

Since the first oil crisis approximately five years ago, the Post Office has taken various measures to conserve fuel in a purposeful manner. A few examples could be mentioned in this regard. A computer is used continuously to check the full details concerning the fuel consumption of every vehicle, to analyse them every month and to investigate and rectify any deviation. Furthermore, the smallest possible vehicle is used for every purpose. Public transport is also used wherever possible. They propagate and promote the cultivation of sensible driving habits, the elimination of unnecessary journeys, and the co-ordination of others. They also see to it that the engines are properly tuned to ensure the optimum fuel consumption. For these reasons, the Post Office has already achieved good results, and these measures have been extremely successful.

Fuel consumption has dropped by 21,2% since 1973. A very important aspect is that Post Office vehicles now consume 18,67 litres per 100 km as against 23,7 litres per 100 km five years ago. This in itself is a very important aspect.

In the long term the Post Office envisages definite possibilities of fuel-saving through the ever-increasing use of telecommunication services like telephone services, telex services, video and data services, electronic mail despatch services and the electronic money transfer system. The increasing use of these and other services can contribute significantly to fuel saving. Similarly, the electronic video conference facilities will also play an important role in the elimination of journeys in future. The motto of the Post Office is: It is cheaper to move information than to move people. There are many possibilities waiting to be exploited in this regard. The Post Office sees a distinct task and responsibility for itself in this field. Another form of saving is effected by means of mechanized sorting. This process is proving to be a very important labour-saving device. Manual sorting of mail is considerably slower than mechanized sorting, mainly because it is sometimes necessary to handle mail items two to three times by hand. With regard to this mechanized mail sorting system, I want to point out to the House that in the three main post offices where this type of sorting is used, the total saving effected—unfortunately time does not allow me to furnish full details—is 989 447 man-hours. It is the equivalent of a labour-saving of approximately 453 man-years. I regard it as one of the most wonderful contributions to labour saving in our country.

Mr. Speaker, before I react to the speech of the hon. member for Kempton Park, I want to congratulate the hon. the Minister on the introduction of his first budget. He did it very well, and although the news was not always good, his presentation was excellent.

As my time is limited, I should like to refer briefly to the speech of the hon. member for Kempton Park. The hon. member put forward some fairly good ideas. His arguments and proposals with regard to self-service centres are excellent and we look forward to hearing what the hon. the Minister has to say in this regard. The hon. member wanted to know where the money for the payment of increased salaries was to come from. He asked the official Opposition and the NRP where we expected the money to come from if the Government was not allowed to increase tariffs. The answer is, of course, that a part of it must indeed come from increased tariffs. The average tariff increase which the hon. the Minister has proposed will yield an income of R106 million annually, while the average salary increases the hon. the Minister proposes will only amount to approximately R30 million a year. To my mind, a very good case can be made out for recovering a certain part of that R30 million by way of increased productivity. In the light of the hon. the Minister’s proposed decentralization of management and the new technique of target management we can surely expect an enormous increase in productivity. Most probably a very large part of the savings effected in this way can also be spent on the salary increases which will cost the Post Office R30 million over the next 12 months.

†I should like to speak this afternoon primarily about two aspects of the posts and telecommunications services. The first aspect I should like to mention, concerns premises. I believe the hon. the Minister and the Post-master-General will be doing extremely well by looking at decentralization of their management structure as such. Presumably—and I should like the hon. the Minister to comment on this if he has the opportunity— while the exercise for the decentralization of management is undertaken, which is an excellent management technique, the department should also make a study of the centres and the kind of services that will be required at a particular centre. I should also like to know whether any thought has been given to the decentralization of the premises aspect of postal services, i.e. for them to go to the areas where the service is going to be used the most. I mention this because if one goes to any large city or town in South Africa, one will find that the main post office is situated in the middle of town. It has been in the middle of town probably for something like 100 years. Yet, the whole process of business and residential areas has been decentralized in the last 20 or 30 years. With this decentralization of residential areas and the rise of hypermarkets and supermarkets in the residential areas and as the industrial areas of our towns have moved further away from the centre, I am sure one will find on examination that the people who use the main post office in the centre of town travel something like 20 or 30 km to get there while their premises are quite far out of town. One sees, for instance, the tremendous volume of traffic in terms of people who go to a hypermarket in the suburban areas over a weekend. There is a very large hypermarket in my own area in Durban North and we find traffic of anything up to 80 000 people there on a Saturday or on a very busy commercial day, such as the end of a month or during the time when people are doing their Christmas shopping. Yet, everyone of those 80 000 people has to travel at least three km to get to the nearest post office. While the department is looking at the decentralization of management structure there may be sense in it for them to undertake a study to see whether it has not become necessary to decentralize the premises to the areas which are using it at the most. In this regard I am referring to the postal services, as telecommunications obviously is a different kettle of fish. These can go to the most suitable place as they are not dependent on the population flow.

The next aspect I want to look at is the people of the Post Office. No organization can run without people. It cannot run without effective people and it cannot run without trained and well-rewarded people. I am very pleased to see that the hon. the Minister in his budget speech mentioned that one of the key areas which the Post Office has been looking at, and presumably the hon. the Minister has been looking at it as well, is the question of staffing. The Post Office staff in particular are certainly to be commended and congratulated on the attitude they have taken towards curbing inflation. I think it is fairly generally known, but it is worth repeating, that since 1971 the Post Office staff have increased their working hours from a 40 hour week to a 42 hour week, in many cases without compensation. Also, their call to have a five-day week introduced has had to be sacrificed to a very large extent because of the vital aspect of the postal service. They have done this willingly. They have done it in the interests of the telecommunications and postal services, because without these any country will fall into chaos. I think they definitely deserve a word of appreciation. At the same time I would also like to point out to the hon. the Minister that if he intends to try to close the wage gap between the higher paid and the lower-paid personnel, which in most cases means White and Black, the formula which he has used for increasing White wages by 10%, Indian and Coloured wages by 12,5% and wages for Blacks by 15%, is not going to work. The hon. the Minister is not going to be able to close the wage gap by such differential percentage increases, commendable as they are. Because if one looks at the base line where these salaries start from, it becomes an arithmetical impossibility to close the wage gap purely by giving the lower-paid worker a larger percentage and the higher-paid worker a smaller percentage.

What about productivity?

The hon. member asks about productivity. Productivity is obviously the answer to the whole question, and I think the hon. member is learning by associating so closely with us in these benches what the priorities are. [Interjections.] I think it is absolutely right, but I would like to point out to the hon. the Minister that one cannot close the wage gap by having a differential system of percentages for increases. It is an arithmetical impossibility. If the hon. the Minister would like to run that through his computer, he will see that the wage gap will in fact only close in about 120 years from now, if that. So, the answer really does lie in the improvement of productivity. If one considers that after the S.A. Railways, the Post Office is probably one of the largest employers of staff in South Africa, then it becomes evident that something is going to have to be done to increase productivity in order to increase the real earnings of the Post Office employees. I should just like to give an example. I know that examples are onerous, but it is interesting to note that the average wage paid to the employees of the Post Office is about R3 000 per year, which is about R250 per month, as compared to the wages of Railway employees who receive an average of R381 per month. There are obviously reasons why there are such differences, but from an interpretation of the figures we have been given, my guess is that there is a very strong possibility that more than 1 000 people in the Post Office, particularly the Blacks, are currently being paid a wage which lies below the poverty datum line. The poverty datum line is at present in the region of R140 per month, and in examining the figures that the hon. the Minister has given us, I am led to believe that there are many hundreds of employees in the Post Office who are being paid wages below the poverty datum line.

The answer to this is obviously to improve training because there must be definite reasons why those people are paid wages below the poverty datum line. In spite of the fact that there may be reasons, however, that is not a satisfactory situation. The answer definitely does lie in the course the hon. the Minister is following in the training of certain sectors. If the hon. the Minister, however, wants to come out on top and keep tariffs down, if he wants to increase salaries and the real wealth of the people in the Post Office and if he is really intent upon closing the wage gap, thereby ultimately being able to offer equal opportunity for equal pay, he must increase productivity, as the hon. member on my left has said.

It is interesting to note that the motor repair industry, by undertaking the kind of programme I am going to recommend, was able to increase the productivity of its technical workers by 45%. This is consequently my recommendation. The work study department in the Post Office, which I see is a very small one, must undertake a system of job evaluation and conduct a thorough method study in order to move to eventual job restructuring. One must be able to break down the existing jobs of technically trained people so as to remove the routine, repetitive aspects. One then takes the skilled man and uses him as a skilled man by virtue of having removed the routine, repetitive aspects of his job, having trained a man up from the lower echelons to take care of those aspects. Then, of course, one adjusts the salaries, and this is absolutely essential so that people can be rewarded adequately. If the Post Office undertakes this programme of job evaluation, method study and decentralized management, as it has done, and combines this with adequate training and job restructuring, there will be real progress in the sphere of adequate reward for adequate services.

On closing I should like to tell the hon. the Minister that although he has delivered his budget very well—and like the curate’s egg, there are very many parts that are good and there are parts that are not—I think he has really shocked us with the magnitude of the tariff increases, and certainly the hon. the Minister has not heard the last of that from me.

Mr. Speaker, I very much wish to associate myself with the laudatory remarks by the hon. member for Durban North in connection with the Post Office staff. Similar remarks have already been made by various other hon. members in the House this afternoon. I shall come back to this again and deal with the Post Office staff at greater length.

I think the Opposition parties are entitled to criticize a budget. However, at the end of the Second Reading debate on this budget, it is quite evident that the Opposition parties had a difficult task this afternoon criticizing a budget that really did not offer the opportunity for criticism in depth. What did happen was that here and there, members of the Opposition made a statement. But they were unable to go beyond that.

Then you did not listen.

I shall come back to the hon. member for Durban North and then I shall convince him that I did listen to his views. I shall try to prove my statement.

Then you have learned something.

If one considers the amendment introduced by the hon. chief spokesman for the official Opposition, it strikes one that he indicated, inter alia, that the budget could not be approved because the increase in tariffs would place an additional burden on the population. He said, moreover, that it would result in higher prices and would therefore stimulate inflation. Surely it is quite clear that if there is an increase in tariffs, then what the hon. member has predicted, will happen. After all, we cannot have our cake and eat it. It is surely very clear that if tariffs are not increased, we shall ultimately be faced with a reduction in the services of the department involved, in this case the postal services. We now have to decide: Do we, on the one hand, want to go without services rendered by the department, or, on the other hand, do we want to increase tariffs as a result of essential requirements and so make a contribution at that level?

That is quite correct.

The hon. member has also stated that the time for the increase in tariffs was very ill-chosen. I should very much like to hear from the hon. member when would be the opportune time for an increase in tariffs as far as the official Opposition is concerned: When the Post Office is deeply in the red so that they can advance the argument that it is an indication of maladministration because timely provision had not been made to save us from getting into that position?

The hon. member for Pinelands took it further by stating that there was no certainty whether it was going to be 1 October, 1 June or 1 November. The same argument applies to the remarks by the hon. member for Pinelands: I am convinced that he will never regard any time as opportune for an increase in tariffs. It is therefore not convincing if a person makes clever statements without at the same time offering positive solutions connected with the criticism expressed.

I now come back to the hon. member for Durban North, who told the hon. the Minister that the wage gap would not be eliminated within the next century or so unless it was bridged by way of increases of varying percentages. As the hon. member sees it, the solution is to be found in the field of productivity. The hon. the Minister has already committed himself to strive for an increase in productivity in the Post Office. I shall come back to that later on.

The point I now wish to make in reply to the argument by the hon. member, is the following: If I understood him correctly, the hon. member argued that an increase in productivity must necessarily result in an increase in salaries. Whereas the hon. member has said that the tariff increases are too high, the hon. member for Umhlanga has said that there are shortcomings in certain services and that those services must therefore be improved. One hon. member says that the wage gap should be bridged more quickly by means of increased productivity, which will require higher salaries; but I, on my part, want to know where the money for higher salaries is to come from.

There must be fewer staff.

I shall come back to the argument of fewer people and prove to the hon. member to what extent the Post Office has already succeeded during the past decade in limiting its increase in staff. His view of matters therefore does not offer any solution. If the hon. member wishes to advance such an argument, he must not argue that an increase in tariffs is undesirable. In fact, he must accept an increase in tariffs so that higher salaries can be paid for increased productivity. I shall let that suffice.

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When one considers the business of the Post Office in depth and one has had the opportunity of hearing about the achievements of the Post Office during the past decade and during the past year in particular, it is very clear that these things could not have been achieved purely as a result of the fact that there were facilities or that money was utilized for certain services; it must also necessarily be ascribed to the fact that the staff responsible for the rendering of service, have a strong sense of pride in their work, because otherwise it would simply not be possible.

Consequently it is very clear to me that the marked and really wonderful achievements of the Post Office are also largely ascribable to the efficient work performed by the members of staff from the highest to the lowest level, coming from all population groups. I wish to state further that this can only be done by a staff that in the first place is well trained, and who, in the course of their duties, constantly keep abreast and strive to improve their services by undergoing in-service training courses. However, they can only achieve this if they are dedicated to the work they are performing. One finds this all along the line. It does not matter what a person’s profession may be. I think that is one of the major reasons for success.

We are talking about achievements by the Department of Posts and Telecommunications, and I want to indicate this more specifically. In the annual report the growth during the past decade is indicated. I wish to emphasize a few of those aspects and compare them with the growth in the staff establishment. The hon. member for Durban North says we should limit the staff. If we consider the growth during the decade 1967-’68 to 1977-’78 and we allocate 100 marks to the year 1967-’68 as the index year, we find that at the end of the decade the revenue increased from R146 million to R695 million—an index figure of 476; the operational expenditure, from R122 million to R627 million—a figure of 512; the capital expenditure, from R34 million to R266 million—a figure of 776; the number of telephones, from 1 239 000 to 2 365 000—a figure of 191; the number of internal telephone call units, from 1 443 million to 6 496 million—a figure of 404; the number of telex subscribers, from 3 703 to 14 930—a figure of 403; and the number of mail items handled, from 1 258 million to 1 585 million—a figure of 126.

When we consider these indices, we notice that only in the case of two items, namely the number of mail items handled and the number of telephones, is the increase in the index of a hundred less than 100. With regard to the number of telephones, the excess is 91 and with regard to the number of mail items handled, the excess is 26. In the case of the other items, the increases were, inter alia, 376,412 and 676.

If one compares these details with the increase in staff during the past decade, one sees that the staff establishment increased from 48 125 to 71 758—an index figure of 149. In other words, the increase in staff was drastically low, and in some cases four times lower than the growth in any one of the other sectors I have referred to. This is the best method of indicating that the staff has definitely already reached a very high degree of efficiency, because otherwise they would not have been able to accomplish what is indicated by the figures. I wish to state that during the 1977-’78 financial year the number of full-time members of staff increased by 4,15%. The number of Whites increased by 1 113 and the number of non-Whites by 1 743.

If we consider these achievements and state that the staff deserves credit for them, we must ascertain why the staff was able to succeed to that extent in the service they were performing. The first is most decidedly the restructuring about which the hon. the Minister has already furnished full details in his Second Reading speech. All of us can commend that. In fact, hon. members who have participated in this debate have already done so.

These people in the employ of the Post Office enjoy good training. The staff, mainly the new entrants to the service, undergo functional training. The White technicians are trained for three to four years at various places, in particular at Colleges for Advanced Technical Education. It is interesting to note that in this respect too, the requirements set are high. I think it is only correct that they try and recruit candidates who have the Senior Certificate and who have also passed mathematics and chemistry and physics as subjects for the matriculation certificate.

There is of course also the further training at the Post Office college at Olifantsfontein, a complex that came into use in 1970. I think it is worthwhile for anyone, not only persons interested in postal affairs, to go and view that training college, where provision is made for 700 trainees to be trained simultaneously and where there are also well-equipped hostels in which 500 of these trainees can be accommodated.

Provision is also made for the training of Coloureds, for example the technicians, at the C.A.T.E. of the Cape Peninsula. It is also important to note that at all these colleges for advanced technical education, whether for Whites, Coloureds, Indians, or Blacks, the class fees as well as the examination fees are paid, and I think this is an excellent example being set by the department. I also wish to refer to the report which appeared in the newspaper recently when the hon. the Minister opened the new Post Office college for Coloureds at Belhar in Bellville, a building that was constructed at a cost of R746 000. I also want to congratulate the hon. the Minister and his department on that training college which has specifically been provided for the Coloureds. I also wish to endorse what the hon. the Minister said when, on that occasion, he expressed this fine thought: “The centre will be the threshold to a stable and meaningful professional life for thousands of young Coloureds.” I trust that this had the necessary impact among the Coloured population, who are being afforded this opportunity of being really meaningfully trained to render an exceptionally positive service.

In respect of the aspect of in-service training, I also want to make the point that the Post Office is intent on developing every employee to his or her full potential, in order, of course, to ensure optimum output. The hon. the Minister has also pointed out in his budget speech that he is striving for a happy and motivated management corps so as to ensure efficient functioning. In order to achieve that, various seminars and courses are made available to the staff. These are orientation courses, seminars on modern personnel management, courses for high-level executives, for senior officers, for training officers, and so on.

There is, however, one matter I wish to single out, because even if we were to give this training to the officers, we would still lack good service if we did not see to it that the official who, in the final instance, is in direct contact with the public, the people he is serving, is not also well equipped in his relations with those whom he has to serve. It gives me pleasure to note in the annual report that particular attention is being given to that, in that in the course of the year organized talks on courtesy and good manners are held, particularly for young officers in the department who deal with the public so that they too can render an exceptional service because they have an understanding of the importance of human relations.

In this regard, I think it is fitting also to point out to the public that on their part, too, the necessary good human relations should be displayed towards those behind the counters, whether it be in the Department of Posts and Telecommunications or in the Department of Transport, or the entire Public Service. I am inclined to think that often when we stand in the queue, we think that we are the only persons in a hurry and with an important matter to attend to, and in the process we are sometimes inclined, I think, to express unfair criticism towards those people who are exerting themselves to serve us to the best of their ability. Unfortunately, my time has now expired, and I cannot enlarge on that.

I therefore want to conclude by expressing our congratulations to the Minister for the manner in which he has delivered his first budget speech, and to wish him and his department success. Finally, I want to tell the Postmaster-General and his staff that the population of South Africa really has sincere appreciation for the work they are doing.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 75.

Mr. Speaker, I should like to begin by expressing my very sincere thanks to all hon. members who have participated in the debate, especially for their kind words to me on the occasion of my first budget More especially, I want to thank them for the appreciation and recognition of the Post Office officials which was so abundantly clear from their speeches. In particular, I identify myself with the recognition which hon. members gave to the special role played by the Postmaster-General over the past ten years. Together with all the participants in this debate we thank him very much for his firm guidance as head of the Post Office officials, and we thank him very much for his contribution and his enthusiasm. The Post Office owes a great deal to him, and we should like to honour him today at the beginning of this second decade. We honour him for what has been achieved during the first decade of independence by him and my predecessors and all the officials, from the highest to the lowest.

If I had to summarize in two single concepts the main criticism of the hon. Opposition, I would say that they are critical of this budget, specifically of the extent and timing of the tariff increases. None of them alleged that there should have been no increases whatsoever. Therefore I think that we should give attention to these two matters before we come to the various issues raised here by the respective hon. members. To begin with, I want to say a few words about the timing, to which so many hon. members referred so emotionally. They said that for the sake of the fight against inflation, for the sake of economic recovery, we should not have increased the tariffs now. At the same time, the same Opposition speakers, and especially the hon. member for Pinelands and the hon. member for Port Elizabeth Central, said that we should have increased the tariffs last year or even earlier. For the sake of perspective, we should also refer back to what was said by my esteemed predecessor on this matter last year. What did he say? On 13 March last year he said (Hansard, 1978, col. 2874)—

So it is not true, as some speakers alleged, that he said it was not necessary. A year ago he was already saying that it could be justified. Then he added—

I want to quote to hon. members two of those factors as mentioned by my predecessor on 13 March last year—

Those are the arguments which hon. members opposite are now using.

The same arguments still apply.

If they say that the same arguments still apply, I want to ask them whether they foresee a time when we shall not have a fight against inflation in South Africa. [Interjections.] If we take that argument to its logical conclusion, we should never increase tariffs. I think it would be a more reasonable approach to ask whether this is a better occasion than last year, and the reply to that is a clear and unequivocal “yes”.

A year ago the economy was indeed at a very delicate stage, and I am not trying to allege that this is no longer the case. However, there are positive signs of improvement, so much so that it has been reflected in our revenue and the earlier tariff increase that my predecessor said we might have could be avoided because of the increase in revenue. We ascribe that increase in revenue mainly to the improvement of the economy. Because we are aware of it and we do not want to impede it, we make a point of saying that the tariffs are not being increased immediately, but only on 1 October 1979, unless something dramatic happens. For another six months, therefore, nothing additional is being taken out of the economy and we are allowing the economy to continue improving. In the light of the incentive of the hon. the Minister of Transport and the great expectations we all have of the budget which is to come, we feel that the economy will not be disrupted or depressed by this budget. For the sake of good planning, and in order to operate on business principles as it has been instructed to do, the Post Office also has to announce at some stage that it has now made its contribution to the economy and that the time has come for the internal affairs of the Post Office to be investigated so that they may remain on a sound basis.

If we wait too long before increasing tariffs, and the Post Office begins to lag behind, it will not benefit the economy of South Africa. The same hon. members who are scolding me now because of the tariff increase at this stage will ask me in a year’s time why I have allowed services to lag behind in a time of economic revival. Then they will tell me that the demand for services is growing and that I should not increase tariffs.

Mr. Speaker, where am I to find the funds to meet the increased demand? Surely it is logical, and if hon. members on that side of the House had wanted to be fair, they would already have conceded this to me without my having to argue about it.

The Post Office has contributed its share, and the record of tariff increases testifies to this. The Post Office is still helping by keeping its tariff increases reasonable.

This brings me to the extent of the tariff increases. Before discussing that, I want to say something more in connection with the timing. If there had been tariff increases last year, as some of the hon. members argued, would they have risen then and said that the timing was right? I do not think so. I am glad to see that hon. members on that side of the House have enough good sense left to smile in recognition of this argument. Hon. members on that side of the House realize that they would have argued even more forcefully last year that tariffs should not be increased because the economy was too delicate.

I come now to the extent of the increase. If we accept that an increase has become inevitable at this stage, the question arises, as argued by several hon. members, including the hon. member for Umhlanga, of whether its extent can be justified. As soon as we talk about the extent, it brings us to the guiding principle of the Franzsen Commission concerning the 50% self-sufficiency which was declared to be the ideal. In this connection, I want to concede at once that that is not the law of the Medes and Persians, of course. On the other hand, it is not just one more guideline of minor importance, as hon. members on that side of the House tried to give out.

Those were your own words.

It is a policy and a guideline which were accepted for good reasons, and because it is a guideline, we try to keep to it. We on this side of the House are not used to laying down guidelines and then regularly deviating from them. When we accept a guideline, we do so because we believe in it, and then we follow it. When the Post Office budgets for a target, we first define the target and then we strive to attain it and we try to come as close as possible to that target. As I say, we believe that it is a sensible guideline, and for that reason we want to follow it. But because it is not the law of the Medes and Persians, and because, as I said in my Second Reading speech, there are other related factors which must be borne in mind in considering something of this nature, we apply it in a flexible way and not rigidly from year to year. We try to apply the principles over the medium term. I have tried to show how we reached the median during previous years—1975, 1976, 1977 and 1978 —and virtually arrived at 50%. However, we are in a new cycle now and we have to reach that median again. For that reason, this tariff increase is intended to achieve 50% self-sufficiency over the medium term as well. It is true—and I readily concede it—that the indications are that we shall exceed the 50% within the next year, but we shall not achieve the 50% mark this year. What will happen in the year after, no one knows. As far as the present financial year is concerned, we are far below the mark. We therefore apply the measure in a flexible way, but we are not prepared to give it up. I want to give a few reasons why we regard this guideline as sensible. In determining the self-financing percentage, an attempt was made to create a dispensation under which a balance could be maintained between the capital burden to be borne by present and future generations. If we disturb this ratio over the medium to the long term in favour of loans, this will mean that posterity will have to bear an unreasonably high burden of interest, a burden of interest which may have to be recovered by means of higher tariffs. If hon. members of the PFP believe—and I think some of them are stupid enough to believe it—that they are ever going to come into power, they should be glad that I am increasing the tariffs now, so that they will not need to do so later and then be saddled with a lot of debt.

Thank you very much.

Experts such as Dr. Franzsen regard a 50/50 basis as balanced and reasonable, and I heard no argument from that side of the House in support of a deviation from that standpoint. We accept it and we have laid it down as our policy. In this connection, we can also be guided by the private sector. Organized commerce and industry initially opposed this formula, but later accepted it as reasonable when they realized that the provision for depreciation and higher replacement costs formed part of the self-financing component. Therefore my submission is that the question before us is fairly simple. In drafting a budget such as this one, one has only three options. In the first place, we have to borrow more if we do not want to increase tariffs. I have already tried to indicate that the burden of interest and the burden of debt would place an unfair burden on the shoulders of those who come after us if we were to take that course. In the second place, we could do less and plan on a smaller scale. We should not plan to meet the enormous demand for services in the non-White areas at this stage. We must begin to think small and we must decide, for the sake of popularity and in order not to increase tariffs at this stage, to do less and to reduce our activities. I have already indicated that there are certain disadvantages attached to borrowing money. To do less, I believe, is not regarded as a wise step by anyone in this House. The only remaining alternative, therefore, is to increase tariffs in terms of the sensible 50%/50% policy. That is why the extent of the increase is reasonable, because it is based on the application of this sensible guideline and does not move beyond it.

I come now to the various matters brought to my attention by hon. members. I shall try to reply to them as fully as possible.

†In the first instance, the hon. member for Hillbrow asked for details with regard to how the R53 million which the increase in tariffs will bring about, is compiled. In particular he asked how much of this amount would come from the telephone services. From the communication services as a whole, including local calls, overseas calls, trunk calls, telex services, telegraph services, radio services and miscellaneous telecommunication services will come, over a full year, R85,159 million; from postal services, over a full year, an amount of R17.748 million; and from money transfer services, over a full year, R3,3 million. This gives a total of R106,207 million. If that is divided by two—because we are aiming at 1 October—the hon. member will see that that gives R53 million. I can give him further details during the Committee Stage, should he so require.

Secondly, the hon. member for Hillbrow and, I think, the hon. member for Pinelands, referred to the uncertainty which the public is subjected to as a result of the woolliness in regard to the date when the tariffs will be increased. I do not think those hon. members listened to me very attentively. Therefore I am going to quote from my budget speech.

*I said—

†Mr. Speaker, that means clearly that it is extremely unlikely that it will be before 1 October. It may even be later, and I sincerely hope that it will be later. I hope that we will experience an increase in income as a result of the factors which I have just read out and which might make it possible for the date to be 1 November or 1 December or 1 January 1980 or even 1 April 1980. Let us hope that that will happen. But at the moment we do not foresee that this will happen. In our calculations we have already included an expected rise in income from telecommunication services and all other types of services. We therefore foresee that the date will be 1 October, but not before.

Mr. Speaker, is the hon. the Minister prepared to go as far as to say that it will not be before 1 October?

Mr. Speaker, I have just said so. I have said that it would not be before 1 October, unless some sort of a calamity happens.

The hon. member for Hillbrow has said that the increase with regard to postal services is not justified. He argued that we must accept a loss on postal services as being inevitable. I have no quarrel with that, because I myself, in my budget speech, said that we must accept that to some extent the telecommunication side would always subsidize the postal side of the Post Office. On the other hand, we must make the postal side as viable as possible without pricing postal services out of the market. As far as this is concerned, I think the hon. member for Durbanville replied very effectively to the arguments advanced by the hon. member for Hillbrow. The hon. member for Hillbrow then went on to say that there was a lack of coordination, especially in regard to the installation of services in new non-White residential areas. He said that cables should be installed when townships were laid out. I can give him the assurance that we are doing our utmost.

When I became Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, I instructed the department to ensure that there was this kind of co-ordination, but found that they had already been doing so. The hon. member must realize, however, that it is not always possible to lay the cables at exactly the same time. He must also realize that it is not economical to install cables in areas if one is not sure what the demand for services in that area will be or to install cables in areas where the cables may have to lie idle for many months or even years. There is, therefore, the factor of economics involved, but I can nevertheless give the hon. member the assurance that with new layouts we try to keep abreast of the general development of the area concerned.

The hon. member also referred to vandalism, with specific reference to the Defence Force. He also referred to the availability of telephones in training camps.

*In this connection I just want to mention that there is excellent co-operation between us and the Defence Force. At training centres, call-boxes are moved to positions where they are under constant surveillance, and this helps to combat vandalism. Pipelines and armoured cables are used, and we get good co-operation from the military authorities. In fact, the cooperation is so good that in some cases a fulltime guard is stationed at call-boxes where vandalism is a serious problem. The value of discipline is clear, because vandalism usually accompanies the intake of new servicemen. When they have been in the hands of the Defence Force officers for a while, however, vandalism declines drastically.

I am satisfied in my own mind that call-box facilities at most bases are adequate at the moment. At certain places, where they are not quite adequate, a number of call-boxes will be installed within the next three months or so. I may mention, for example, that at Potchefstroom, another 18 call-boxes are to be installed. On our own initiative, we regularly revise the need for call-boxes at the bases, and the military authorities also use the open channels which exist between us. When they feel that there is such a need, they bring this to our attention, and then we try to solve the problem.

†The last matter the hon. member raised concerned the possibility of a medical aid scheme for Blacks. We do have schemes for Whites, Coloureds and Indians, but unfortunately no progress has been made with such a scheme for Blacks, because we in the Post Office cannot do it in isolation. Such a scheme would have to be designed for the entire public sector, and as with other similar aspects, it should be initiated by the appropriate department which, in this case, is the Department of Plural Relations and Development Up to now this has not been considered viable, but if and when it is considered viable we shall co-operate to the fullest possible extent.

*The hon. member for Sunnyside made a very solid contribution as the chief spokesman on this side, and I want to thank him. In particular, he highlighted those tariffs which had not been increased. It was striking that none of the hon. members on the other side who spoke after him made any positive remarks in this connection. [Interjections.] Listening to them, one would have said that all tariffs had been increased. It does not suit them that there are certain tariffs that have not been increased. The hon. members of the PFP in particular have been guilty of this in that they have not highlighted the positive aspects as well.

I also want to thank the hon. member for his lecture to the hon. member for Hillbrow on how to read a balance sheet and a revenue and expenditure account. I hope this hon. member will take the lesson to heart.

The hon. member for Sunnyside also made a specific proposal concerning telegrams. I want to give him a few comparative figures which ought to console him. What will telegrams in South Africa cost when the proposed increase has come into effect? I concede that the increase in this case is fairly drastic. A telegram of 20 words—I want to use this as a typical example—will cost R1 from now on. In West Germany, the same telegram costs R4; in Australia, R2,92; in the United Kingdom, R2,59; in France, R,65; and in Switzerland, R2,06. Nevertheless, I shall go into the hon. member’s proposal. However, I want to tell him at this stage that I doubt whether we shall be able to deviate from the budget proposals. We have considered them very thoroughly; we have struggled to keep tariffs as low as possible, and the planning took the form of a package, as it were, which one could hardly alter at this stage.

The hon. member also spoke of a name for the new microwave tower in Pretoria. I shall consider his proposal in this connection. We shall make an announcement in due course concerning the name which has been chosen. I can assure the hon. member that we shall try to find a suitable name, and if we want to honour a person by naming it after him, it will be someone who is worthy of that honour. Incidentally, we intend to lay out those grounds beautifully, to establish fine gardens and to make sport and other facilities available there to the Post Office employees.

†Sir, the hon. member for Umhlanga Rocks … [Interjections.]

He is on the rocks!

Sir, I do not think I should explain why the hon. member reminds me of Umhlanga Rocks. I want to thank the hon. member for Umhlanga for his warm and sincere good wishes and for the compliments he paid to the department. He had the courage as Opposition member to give recognition where recognition was due. For that we thank him. He was much more balanced in his criticism than the hon. member for Hillbrow. I think the best evidence of the unnecessary sharpness in the speech of the hon. member for Hillbrow is to be found in this hon. member’s criticism. They listened to the same speech and had the same interests at heart, viz. to make out this budget as a bad budget. Yet in the one case we experience balanced criticism while in the other case I do not think the necessary balanced approach was there.

Apart from the aspects on which I have already commented in my general introduction, the hon. members specifically quoted percentages. He referred to the fact that I had announced that tariffs on letters and telephone calls were to be increased by 25%. I want to remind him that it is difficult for us to fragment such costs, as we are dealing with very small amounts. For instance, an increase of half a cent on letters would lead to the reintroduction of the half-cent coin into our economy. I do not think that that would be very practical at this stage. Furthermore, the increases we are proposing fall within the scope of the guidelines laid down by the Franzsen Commission. The hon. member said that the tariff increase in regard to periodicals was 100%. In this regard I want to give some statistics to the House to indicate why we find it necessary to bring in a fairly drastic increase with regard to periodicals and news items which are not bona fide newspapers. I shall not mention the names of the companies, but I want to say that in toto the Post Office has been subsidizing the despatch of periodicals, other news letters, etc., at a rate of R1 130 000 per year. With what they have paid, we have not even covered the actual costs involved in moving a particular item. We have received no remuneration whatsoever for the handling thereof or any other services involved in this regard. It was therefore necessary to raise the tariff. There is one particular periodical, which I shall not name, …

To the Point.

… which we subsidized to the tune of R240 000 in one year.

The hon. member warned that because of the tariff increases we envisage, businessmen would now make less use of the Post Office and that they will not post an invoice, but keep it and enclose it with their statements of account. If they can improve their effectiveness, it is good and well that they do so. It will not affect us detrimentally, because in the postal service we are extremely labour intensive. Should there therefore be an appreciable decrease in traffic, it will also result in a decrease in our expenditure, because there will be a decrease in labour intensity. We therefore do not ask of any business to make more use of us than he really wants to. Any business is free—and I recommend it to them—to find ways to cut down on their expenses. If we lose as a result thereof, South Africa will gain, because that will really be fighting inflation.

In conclusion the hon. member referred to the ideal we have set to provide telecommunication services within 48 hours after the receipt of the request. I want to tell him that we provide service within 48 hours to thousands of applicants right at the moment and that the percentage is steadily increasing. It is therefore no idle dream, although I must stress that it will not be achieved generally in the next year or so. In the rural areas, where greater distances are involved, obviously it may never be achieved to a 100% extent.

*The speech made by the hon. member for Durbanville testified to the fact that he had studied the subject in depth. He furnished important facts, which ought to give any objective listener perspective and understanding of why the things we have announced in this budget are necessary. I thank him for that. I want to advise hon. members to go and read his speech. Then they will be less troublesome during the Third Reading.

Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask the hon. the Minister whether there is any justification for the provision in this year’s budget of an amount of R255 000 for the erection of a telecommunication building at a place as small as Delmas?

Hey!

Does the hon. the Minister know, perhaps, whether this will also contribute to the drop in the price of butter?

We discussed Delmas at some length last year. I have studied the situation there very carefully. We have decided that Delmas deserves it—in spite of their MP!

The hon. member for Port Elizabeth Central reproached us for not having lowered the tariffs in time. I think I have already dealt with that aspect of his speech and I do not want to take it any further now. He told us that we could not compare South Africa with other countries, as the hon. member for Durbanville did, and as I also did with regard to the telegram tariff. There is also a scientific method of comparison which he may find more satisfactory. I think I should perhaps give him that information. If we apply a more comprehensive norm and we compare the number of hours the average worker has to put in to pay for an equal volume of services, the result still shows that South Africa is one of the cheapest countries in the world as far as posts and telecommunications are concerned. I want to give the hon. member a few figures on this basis, i.e. the hours which have to be worked by the citizen for an equal quantity of services. Let us look first at postal services. In South Africa, after increases, when these are implemented—the increases we are debating here—he will have to work 18 hours a year; in Canada, 26 hours; in Spain, 28 hours; in the USA, 31 hours; in the United Kingdom, 43 hours; in Australia, 44 hours; in Sweden, 58 hours; in Switzerland, 59 hours; in Western Germany, 62 hours; in Holland, 70 hours; in Japan, 88 hours; and in France 109 hours. These are radical differences and they show that we can really face our voters when we are compared with these countries and that we can tell them that their service is one of the cheapest in the world by any standard. When we look at telephone services, we do not compare so well with Switzerland and Sweden, but we do compare very well with many other countries. In South Africa, on the same basis of the hours a person has to work, that increase we have proposed is 162 hours. Switzerland is lower with 92 hours. Sweden is lower still with 66 hours. However, in Norway the figure is 175 hours; in the United Kingdom, 177 hours; in West Germany, 193 hours; in Australia, 197 hours; and in France, 317 hours.

The hon. member for Port Elizabeth Central asked a question in connection with the post office of Port Elizabeth. Naturally, I do not have all the facts readily available. However, I shall go into the matter and when we come to the Committee Stage, I hope to come back to it and to give him further particulars. However, he must not cherish any hopes on that account, or think that I am going to make a positive announcement. I shall consider the facts carefully and then we can talk again.

We hope you will come to open it for us one day!

Finally, the hon. member talked about money transfer services. Money transfer services take the form of the ordinary postal order and the commission on it, and postal orders are meant for the little man who does not keep a cheque account and does not have those methods of payment available to him. He is affected by this, because he usually uses that method for transferring money. The hon. member said that I was hitting people for a six, but if I were to increase it to comply with that hon. member’s request, i.e. that I should reduce the loss on those services, I would really be hitting the man in the lower income group for a six. Therefore, as in the case of postal services, although for other reasons, we think that we should be very careful in this connection and that we should not hit the poor man for a six.

For the same reason, we are not putting up the telephone rental, because that would be hard on the pensioner, to whom the hon. member for Pinelands referred, because he has to have a telephone. The way it is used is up to him. He can keep down his accounts, therefore, or allow them to go up, just as he likes. But we are trying to keep the basic rentals low to enable him to retain the convenience of a telephone.

I feel that I should not keep on praising all hon. members on this side of the House, but how can I help it when they make such good speeches? [Interjections.] The hon. member for Wonderboom advanced well-founded arguments to show why the budget could not have taken any other form. I am particularly grateful to him for having illustrated and highlighted the future and the demands made on us by the future, for having indicated to us why we must start planning now and why we must take an unpopular step now, by increasing tariffs, for example, so that we may be prepared for the challenges which the future will hold for us in the technological sphere. For that we owe the hon. member a debt of gratitude.

†I now want to deal with the hon. member for Pinelands. Apart from his argument in connection with the fact that assurances were given in the past that it was not necessary to increase tariffs—something with which I have already dealt—the hon. member for Pinelands dealt with the question of pensions. He mentioned the position of pensioners who retired before 1973, and also the position of pensioners in general. I, and all hon. members on this side, share his concern. However, the Government has a proud record of recognizing the needs of pensioners and of taking steps, almost from year to year, to alleviate their position. I do not think this is the time or the right debate for a discussion of pensions and such matters. I therefore want to restrict my comment to the specific position of the man who used to work for the Post Office. The first fact which is to be recognized in this regard is that the Post Office does not have its own Pension Fund. The whole question of pensions should also be raised under the Vote of the hon. the Minister of Social Welfare and Pensions.

Before the budget speech I want you to talk with the hon. the Minister of Finance.

With regard to specific conditions, the hon. member pleaded for free telephones for Post Office pensioners. I want to point out that there are different set of rules applicable to serving personnel on the one hand and pensioners on the other hand. The conditions of employment for serving personnel cannot be applied to pensioners, just as the concessions granted to pensioners cannot be applied to serving personnel.

They are the ones who built up the Post Office.

Rental free telephones provided for departmental employees are directly related to the rendering of service. That is why they have it. For this basic reason pensioners cannot share in this concession.

They are the ones who cannot even afford telephones.

Unlike the Railways, where pensioners have to apply for their concession once a year, the Post Office would have little, if any, control over rental free telephone services provided to pensioners. There will or may be abuse of such a concession. Therefore we cannot really give positive consideration to such a situation.

*Mr. Speaker, I should like to conclude. The hon. member for Kempton Park inquired about self-service centres. There are already more than 20 of these centres. In our opinion, they are an unqualified success. We get good public co-operation and we still provide the same basic facilities there as were originally planned. It is true that the needs vary from place to place and that minor adjustments have to be made. The hon. member further inquired about the question of agencies in shops, not only in large, sparsely populated areas, but also in densely populated suburbs. We are experimenting with this at a few places, and it will be some time before we can say whether the use of such agencies would really hold any advantages over the building of new post offices on a decentralized basis.

†The hon. member for Durban North asked whether we were giving sufficient attention to decentralization of post office buildings. I would like generally to say “Yes”. We apply specific formulas and do not regard one big central post office as sufficient to serve all the inhabitants of a big town or city. When we consider decentralization, there are however factors which have to be taken into account. The first and most important factor is that of historical siting of existing post offices. They cannot just be changed from day to day and from year to year. The second point is the availability of sites should we want to move into a particular area. The third point is our financial ability at that particular time. We often find that we would like to build more post offices, but in order to keep the tariffs low, we tend to be fairly conservative in this regard.

The hon. member made a plea for a closer look at the closing of the wage gap by the Post Office. He pointed out that the salary increases announced by me will not succeed in closing the wage gap. In this regard I want to give the hon. member the assurance that we are constantly looking at this matter.

*In this connection, we go along with the initiative taken by the central Government as well, as recently announced by the hon. the Prime Minister. If there is any further initiative from the side of the Government, the Post Office will move hand in hand with the Government and with the public sector in a dynamic attempt to solve this problem. We are bound by the same statutory provisions as the rest of the Public Service, and we would also be wise to refrain from over-hasty action in this connection.

I want to agree with the hon. members for Durban North and Virginia that productivity is very important in this connection. We are in fact giving great attention to it.

The last speaker to participate in the debate was the hon. member for Virginia. He too made out a strong case for the subject he had chosen, a strong case for the efficiency of the Post Office and its staff. I want to thank the hon. member in particular for having highlighted the role of basic training and in-service training in the Post Office and also for having mentioned the great achievements there have already been in this connection. I want to assure the hon. member that we are still endeavouring to renew our training methods. We try to keep up with the latest developments in this connection.

With that I want to conclude and to repeat my sincere thanks to all hon. members for their participation.

Mr. Chairman, although I should at this stage be tempted to deal with the answers given by the hon. the Minister and hon. members on that side of the House to the general theme and the policy behind the budget, I do feel, however, that it would be more appropriate for me to do so during the Third Reading debate. There are still a few matters that, to my mind, should be raised during the Committee Stage so that we can get the answers across the floor of the House.

The first matter I should like to refer to, is the question of the postal services. In regard to the target of delivering letters within 48 hours, I should like to ask the hon. the Minister whether he would consider the possibility of installing post boxes for use by the public in municipal transport, e.g. buses. People who travel by bus can then conveniently post their letters. The conductors or the drivers of such buses can deposit the post in the post box that is usually at the terminus. The Post Office vans can then collect the post there. This could speed up the sorting of post and improve on the speedy delivery of post. The previous Minister mentioned the fact that 38% of all postal matter was delivered one day after it had been posted, 68% two days after posting, 85% three days after posting and 94,4% four days after posting. I wonder whether these ratios are still the same. The 5,6% of the post still undelivered after four days is mostly post on its way to the border. I should like to have an assurance from the hon. the Minister that there is no undue delay in the delivery of post to our men on the border, because I have received complaints from servicemen that they have not received parcels from the Southern Cross. I am not laying the blame only at the door of the Post Office. The fault could lie with the Southern Cross organization itself. These servicemen felt a little bit aggrieved, however, about the fact that others were receiving parcels and not they. It is obviously vital that the morale of the troops should be maintained, and a speedy and efficient postal service to the border can assist in that. If necessary, a special plane should be used.

I also want to refer to the free post service that was introduced on 1 September 1978. Under this service postal articles could be posted without stamps to abbreviated addresses. We all thought that this was a good idea, and we wonder what progress has been made in this regard.

I do not wish to reiterate the losses on the postal service. We all know that the main expense item in this service is the payment of salaries. Transport expenses amounted to R21,7 million last year, and are estimated at R23,4 million for this year. We therefore need to rationalize and to economize. In regard to transport, I should like to ask the hon. the Minister to investigate the possibility of using scooters, which should be preferred to vans in busy towns. It is very often found that the engines of these vans are left running while the post boxes are being cleared. It is true that the department has been the first to show that we could be saving petrol, and it will no doubt continue to do so. I should like to ask the hon. the Minister whether a ways and means committee should not be appointed to restrict unnecessary travel in order to save petrol. A special investigation should also be made in regard to the use of battery-operated vehicles. If I remember correctly, there was favourable comment on this issue by Government members when a private member’s motion to this effect was introduced a while ago. Battery-operated vehicles are excellent for travelling short distances, and in addition do not make any noise.

The next issue I should like to discuss is the question of buildings. From the estimates that have been placed before us, I noticed that a lot of exchanges and post offices are being built I assume that there is a priority list, and I should ask the hon. the Minister to tell us what his policy is in drawing up this list. We are very pleased about the developments that have taken place at the Pretoria post office. Pretoria is a very important city. In passing I want to mention that in programmes Nos. 83 up to and including 88, a capital expenditure of R24,69 million is allocated to Pretoria out of a total capital budget of R31,244 million for that kind of operation. We have no doubt that Pretoria is an important place, but perhaps the hon. the Minister can clear the matter up by providing us with the priority list.

As far as Pretoria is concerned, I sense trouble arising out of the discussions between the members of the commission, the Post Office and the provincial administration of the Transvaal. Although we welcome the new Strijdom post office, it is essential for Pretoria businessmen to have two post offices. I wish to ask whether the hon. the Minister has obtained the approval of the hon. the Minister of Public Works to proceed with the scheme of rebuilding the main post office in Church Square without going to all the additional expense that was envisaged before. I sense that there is a hold-up in the works. Perhaps the hon. the Minister can clear up this doubt.

On the question of the bonus which was announced last year, I noticed in a newspaper report that this was paid to 60 000 workers who had completed 24 months of continuous service. I would like to know from the hon. the Minister whether these bonuses have been paid.

The last matter I want to raise under this item is citizen band radios. A committee of inquiry was appointed to investigate this aspect and completed its report in November 1978. I thank the hon. the Minister for sending me a copy of this report I do not know why this report has not been laid upon the Table. It is not marked confidential and I therefore see no reason why it should not be tabled. We are dealing with two-way radio communication, applied to a variety of purposes, such as communication between aircraft and fixed stations, between ships and harbours, to control fleets of business vehicles, to page doctors, to route taxis and even to send messages on farms. The central authority, in terms of the Radio Act, No. 3 of 1952, must control and determine its use and frequency. Distinction is made between apparatus with an input power of 100 milliwatts, which is a lower-power apparatus, being a short-range apparatus on a power of 4 watts normally serviceable over distances of 10 to 20 km. Provision has therefore been made on the A, B and C bands on that part of the spectrum that lies between 26 and 30 Megahertz. Nine specific channels will be made available on eight bands with a power restriction of 4 watts. New licences will authorize purely private use of the C band. The sale of apparatus is to be controlled and unlicensed users are the target of this control. I want to warn that there is a distinct danger of a lot of two-way equipment being dumped on the South African market Because of interference with vital services such as the army, naval and civil defence and because of a lack of control over persons who exceed their power, a complete ban was placed on these sets in the United States. So, because they can no longer sell these sets in the United States, these sets are now finding their way on to the South African market. They include sets like the Lafayette, the Pace, the Johnson and Viking and the Major GEC 40, which is the most popular. There is a benefit, however, should C band users stick to their own code and not simply provide a warning for speed traps which may be ahead, but provide positive assistance in accidents and emergencies. They have their own code and their own language. These sets are being sold on the open market at present, the code is being given to the purchasers and they unfortunately have the erroneous idea that from 1 April they are all going to be entitled to buy, use and obtain licences for these sets. I have ascertained that this is not the case. The regulations, in fact, pursuant to this law are being framed. It will not be ready until some time in April, and therefore I think the public should be warned of the danger. These sets cost well over R100 each. Some people buy them for fun, and I think they are going to bum their fingers unless they are warned and adequate provision is made with regard to their purchase, use and control. If these sets have been sealed, I would like to know from the hon. the Minister whether, in the event of an emergency, he is prepared to close his eye to the fact that the seal can be broken and the emergency set used in order to prevent a catastrophe happening.

Mr. Chairman, in my opinion the hon. member for Hillbrow, who has just resumed his seat, opened the Committee Stage at a very high level. I think the hon. member set an example as to how a Committee Stage debate should be conducted. He definitely did this in a dignified and responsible way.

We have had a great deal of criticism of the Post Office budget, especially from the other side of the House during the Second Reading debate this afternoon. Of course hon. members opposite have the right to put forward criticism, especially constructive criticism, but on the other hand I do not believe that we in this House are entitled to express criticism bordering on irresponsible allegations, especially not if it is solely for political gain. However, I think the hon. member for Hillbrow has once again returned to the normal standard.

Last week, during the Railway appropriation debate, we often emphasized the socio-economic services provided by the S.A. Railways, and also the investigation carried out to determine whether it was desirable to finance such socio-economic services from other sources. I think the Post Office also provides socio-economic services to South Africa over a very wide spectrum. One thinks of the services which are not profitable to the Department of Posts and Telecommunications, those services which are time-consuming and those which disrupt the planning of production stability.

However, I am going to mention only one item which was also a target for criticism in this afternoon’s discussion. According to the annual report of the Postmaster-General, 10 154 000 telegrams were handled during the past financial year, telegrams paid for by the public. We can take it that the average telegrams costs the sender approximately 45 cents at present tariffs. At the present tariff there could be 15 words in such a telegram. This afternoon I went to the local post Office and asked them to please send a telegram for me. I then noticed how long it took the postmaster to count the words of the telegram. I asked him whether the person on the other side, after the telegram was sent, would need the same time to handle the telegram. To be fair, one has to admit that the larger post offices are equipped with typewriters, but when one takes repetition in consideration, especially of illegible words and codes, one can take it that the handling of a telegram of 15 words, after it has been checked by both sides, takes about two minutes and 20 seconds. When one starts making calculations, one finds that the handling of the just over 10 million telegrams has taken up 6 572 hours during the past financial year. If we then assume that a normal working day is eight hours long, it means that 821 man-workdays were taken up by private telegrams. Therefore I cannot but agree with the hon. the Minister that especially in this field he had to increase the tariff for telegrams drastically to eliminate the backlog of R10 million, which was the deficit for last year.

I should like to come to a section of the department which to my mind is one of the sections which does a particularly interesting job, as well as valuable work, not only for us in South Africa, but for people throughout the world. I refer to the philately services. In the past criticism has often been expressed at our following a fairly conservative stamp issuing policy. When one looks at the policy at present being followed in South Africa, one sees that as far as new series are concerned, a complete new series is issued approximately every five years. Perhaps the issuing of those stamps could in future coincide with some memorable event such as the Republic festival. As far as the special stamps are concerned, it is the policy that a maximum of 15 stamps is issued annually of which the total face value is not more than R3. These special stamps are issued mainly to honour certain people or to commemorate occasions of national or international importance. They are also issued to illustrate aspects of modern, historical and cultural South African occasions or sport and recreation events.

To me the question is: What is the aim of the degree of conservatism in the policy followed in this regard? I think that since 1854, when the well-known Cape triangular postage stamp was issued, South Africa has been respected in the world of philately. I think we are respected for the very degree of conservatism we maintain in the issuing of our stamps. The image projected, reflects refinement and a sense of taste and respect. It also takes the purse of the stamp collector into account.

In South Africa only top artists are used for the designing of stamps. The Postal Stamp Advisory Committee is consulted to keep an eye on the quality of designs and of the stamps as such. What is pictured, is therefore projected in a correct and refined way. To the stamp collector or philatelist the cost of the total annual face value is one of the lowest in the world. In that way we enable the young and penniless scholar to finance a very interesting and enriching hobby from his pocket money.

As far as the forward planning of our stamp issuing, too, is concerned, there is a matter which must be rectified. I know that requests are made from time to time at short notice to the department and even to the Minister and to us as members to issue special commemorative stamps or issues with a special theme. One can only point out that the stamp programme is planned two years in advance.

I should like to avail myself of this opportunity to place on record the appreciation that is felt for the officials of the philately section, and to break a lance for these people who are working behind the scenes. I believe that the officials in our philately services work under tremendous pressure and that everyone of us has to admit that they are the silent ambassadors for South Africa, because they are the people who project the image of our philately and the refined way in which South Africa issues its stamps. For interest’s sake I can point out that last year South Africa issued 28 stamps which included special stamps and normal issues. Those 28 stamps had a total face value of R5,86. In Belgium, on the other hand, 54 were issued with a face value of R34,19, in Britain 29 and in France 60. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I have prepared myself for the Committee Stage only to find that the rug has been pulled out from under my feet by the Press. We blame the Press for many things and now I have to blame the Press for the dilemma I find myself in. This morning’s Natal Mercury gives prominence to the fact that Natal is to get a R48 million Post Office budget boost.

Is that all?

My hon. colleague asks whether that is all. It makes interesting reading. It is pleasing to note that according to Mr. Harold Fuge, the Natal regional director—

All three areas fall in my constituency. The report goes on to say that of the R10,3 million that is going to be spent on laying exchange and underground cables in the Durban area, R1,3 million would be spent at Chatsworth, R725 000 at Ntokozweni and R390 000 at Overport. We welcome the fact that Chatsworth is going to receive attention during the forthcoming year.

We also know that services are to be improved at Austerville, Phoenix and Reservoir Hills. We also note with considerable pleasure that R2,5 million has been allocated to be spent on farm lines. I spoke about this at Second Reading. We believe that this is something that needs urgent attention. It is gratifying to see that the farm lines will be converted to automatic services at Stanger, Doornkop, Darnall, Mandini, Lidgetton and Howick. It is also interesting to note that Stanger, Doornkop and Darnall all fall in my constituency. Mandini is just over the river and Lidgetton and Howick fall in the constituency of the hon. member for Mooi River.

I now want to give a little of the bad news. I think the hon. the Minister should have a good, long and hard look at a certain practice, a practice which I honestly think we can do without. I am referring to the practice followed by the Post Office of addressing letters to a bereaved family. It is done by way of a standard, ordinary roneoed letter addressed to the executor. On this letter the name of the deceased person and his address are filled in. The letter reads as follows—

In this case it should have been addressed Madam—

Is this necessary? I do not think it is necessary to send this letter out within six weeks of the death of a person. I do not believe that, even if it is necessary, there should be a R10 charge for a directory change that is not really required. Why should there be a directory change in the case of a widow? There is after all only a change in the initial. She continues living at the same place. I think the circumstances of each and every case should be investigated before raising what I consider to be quite a considerable charge. R10 is a great deal of money. It is the older people who die and it is the older people who need that money. That R10 can mean a lot of an individual. I am sure that many employees of the Post Office would agree with me and that many employees of the Post Office are embarrassed by this. I know that it was a very unhappy employee I spoke to. He told me that he had to study the death and funeral notices in the papers each day in order to send out these letters.

What happens next? The person who received this letter wrote back as follows—

She received the following reply—

The outgoing subscriber? The letter states further—

But he is gone!—

What is the extension?

It depends on whether it is up or down. The unfortunate widow replied to this as follows—

I appeal to the hon. the Minister to please investigate this matter. He must please stop this. I do not believe the Post Office needs to bolster its income with R10 fees earned in this manner. I think it could be done in a different way. Let us have a little compassion for these people. The hon. the Minister has quite enough money to do things in another way.

Referring to the subjects that were handled earlier by the hon. member for Hillbrow, I wish in the first instance to deal with national servicemen and their telephones. The early days of these national servicemen who are undergoing their military training are anxious days, both for the boys and their parents. The telephone is the only personal contact they have with their homes. The hon. the Minister knows, and I know, that vandalism is a problem. This matter has already been raised by my friend the hon. member for Hillbrow. All too often, the telephone is out of order because of vandalism on the part of a small minority who persist in interfering with the cord between the handset and the telephone proper in order to try to connect certain wires so as to obtain the buzz which will allow them to connect up without feeding a coin into the slot. This is a practice that should be dealt with most severely. But that is for another Vote as I believe this is a matter for the Department of Defence to look into. However, I think that prevention can in most cases be better than cure. I would therefore suggest to the hon. the Minister that he should investigate the possibility of screening the lead between the handset and the box containing the mechanism itself with a flexible metal screen such as is used to connect a stove to the wall plug. Attached to most household stoves there is a flexible cable connecting the stove to the wall plug.

It looks like an elephant’s trunk.

It looks like an elephant’s trunk, as my hon. friend from Howick says. If this lead or cord were screened I believe we could cut out a lot of this vandalism. I think this is something the Post Office could do towards alleviating the situation and something that the Post Office could possibly look at with a view to applying it to all public telephones, because this is where most vandalism takes place, namely on the lead between the handset and the instrument itself.

I now wish to touch on postal codes. I believe it is imperative that everyone must play his part in this connection. I know that we cannot penalize people for not using the code, but if such un-coded mail were clearly marked with a rubber stamp and then sent surface mail, the Post Office would soon receive 100% co-operation. The Post Office must not seek 100% co-operation from only the private and the business sector; it must also seek 100% co-operation from other Government departments. I have three envelopes in my possession and not one of them reflects a postal code and they are all from other Government departments. This is something which must be brought home to people, because the sooner we achieve cooperation in this field, the sooner the hon. the Minister is going to be able to effectively use the new mail sorting systems. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I was amazed that even the hon. member for Umhlanga is now singing the praises of the Post Office. In view of the large amount of money which will be spent in his constituency, I do not believe that he can do anything else. In that case it is, however, really amazing that the hon. member voted against the Second Reading of the Appropriation Bill earlier this afternoon. I wonder what the hon. member’s voters will say about this. If they know how much money is going to be spent in their constituency, I wonder whether they would also have voted against the Bill. I think they would have said; “No, we want it” This demonstrates once again that the hon. member for Umhlanga is completely out of touch with what his people want. [Interjections.] It also proves to us once again that the Post Office is a long way ahead of the hon. member and his party. The Post Office is already planning what has to be done in the hon. member’s constituency.

Earlier today, but especially yesterday, the hon. member for Hillbrow let fly here and kicked up a great fuss. He used words such as “ill-judged” and “ill-timed” and “shock” and “consternation” and “alarm”. He flung words of this nature with gay abandon across the floor of the House. Then, however, the hon. member went to bed last night, and during the night he realized that he was making a fool of himself. [Interjections.] His criticism was unjustified and unfair and completely unfounded. Today, however, the hon. member came back and was much more moderate than yesterday. I could hardly believe my ears when the hon. member for Hillbrow even made positive suggestions here. That might have been because the hon. the Minister got hold of him earlier this evening and replied to him properly, and also pointed out to him that he was making a fool of himself by kicking up such a terrible fuss.

Never mind, just wait until tomorrow.

Similarly, the hon. member for Pinelands realized earlier this afternoon that he could not object to the tariff increases and in the same breath ask for more money to be spent. After all, the money that must be spent, has to come from somewhere.

Once again you were not listening properly.

One simply cannot have one’s cake and eat it, although hon. members of the Opposition would have liked to very much. No reasonable person can argue any longer about the necessity and the inevitability of increases in the Post Office tariffs. I hope hon. members of the Opposition have now stopped arguing about that. It is simply impossible for us to argue about that any longer. It had to come and could not be put off any longer. The Post Office is not asking for tariffs to be increased without giving the people of South Africa something in exchange. The Post Office has played its part in all its fields of activities. In the report of the Postmaster-General we find adequate proof of what has been done during the past 10 years. Therefore the Post Office can rest assured that it has contributed its share, and more than its share.

In the few minutes at my disposal I should like to single out a single sphere tonight and bring it to the attention of the hon. House— one sphere in which I think the Post Office has contributed its share—and that is the delivery of mail in South Africa. Although we are making more and more use of the telephone today to contact one another—and the hon. the Minister also indicated that exciting new methods for contacting one another in future were on their way—the fact remains that everyone of us writes a letter at some stage or other, a letter which has to be delivered to its destination as soon as possible. It is important that mail items should be delivered as quickly as possible and without avoidable delay. The Post Office has realized how important this is. Therefore the efficiency and quality of our postal delivery services is constantly being examined. To identify and quickly eliminate any problem area in this regard, a system of random sampling has since 1976 been put into operation by the Post Office. Within two years after this particular system was introduced, spectacular improvements were effected in this sphere. It was found, inter alia, that of the 100 000 mail items posted, 47 126—that is 47%—were delivered on the first day after they had been posted. That was an improvement of 34%. At the same time only 8% of those 100 000 postal articles had still not been delivered on the third day after they had been posted. That, too, is an improvement of 54%.

Further proof of the excellent improvements in the delivery time of postal articles is to be found in the following facts. Post intended for private post boxes at the 11 large post offices were delivered so quickly that the average delivery time was decreased to 0,75 days. At least 33% of those mail items were deposited in the post boxes on the same day they were posted. At the same time the delivery time of local post to street addresses was decreased to 1,38 days. At least 62% of the post at the 11 large post offices is now being delivered on the first day after it has been posted. Everyone will agree that this is really an excellent achievement of which the Post Office and its staff can, with good reason, be proud. We tend to take the postman, whom we all have in our towns, for granted, to such an extent that we do not even notice him any more. This evening we are paying tribute to 1 971 White postmen, 896 Coloured postmen, 349 Indian postmen and 975 Black postmen who, day after day, throughout the country, faithfully and unceasingly continue to render this important service to South Africa and its people. Hon. members on this side of the House are this evening expressing their gratitude to those people for what they do day after day.

The Post Office also realized that, in spite of the very fast delivery of normal post, there still was a need for the overnight despatch of urgent items, such as computer documents, pathological samples, etc. This led to the establishment of the priority service, which exists today between Johannesburg and Cape Town and other large cities. This priority postal service has since enlarged to such an extent and has become so popular that more than 0,5 million postal articles were handled in 1978. This in itself is a fine achievement— one of the many fine achievements with normal and everyday things with which we are dealing, and here I am specifically referring to the delivery of an ordinary letter and mail item.

These are the steps the Post Office has taken to improve its service since the last general increase. It has done its share and has not rested on its laurels. It has given South Africa and its people a really excellent postal service. The public realizes this and they appreciate this service. Therefore hon. members on this side of the House are not concerned about the reasonable and necessary tariff increases, and the fuss of the official Opposition in this regard will also fall flat, as is usually the case with their arguments.

If one looks at it objectively, it is really incredible and ridiculously cheap to think that one can deliver a letter for 5c. I do not think the hon. member for Hillbrow, even with those electrically driven scooters he wants to use, will be able to do that. In any event, I wonder if one can allow him to deliver letters. If the right objective of the Post Office in this regard is followed correctly, i.e. that tariffs should be brought into line within reasonable limits with costs, we shall have to pay much more for what we receive from the Post Office.

The official Opposition is really very unfair to complain about this. We still are, and the hon. member for Durbanville specifically proved this afternoon with regard to our post office tariffs, etc., the cheapest country in the world.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Verwoerdburg will pardon me for not reacting to his arguments. My time, however, is more limited than are the monetary resources of the Post Office.

†I wish the hon. the Minister well in his new portfolio. Even though he has come forward with a most unpopular budget, I have no doubt that he will politically rise to great heights. I only hope that his tariff increases do not reach the same heights. With all the extra money that the hon. the Minister has at his disposal, I think he should now come to the relief of Port Elizabeth.

In the few minutes allocated to me, I want to make a plea to the hon. the Minister about the new general post office in Port Elizabeth.

*I am convinced of the fact that the hon. member for Port Elizabeth North will give me his full support when I ask for a new general post office for Port Elizabeth. I can see the hon. member nodding his head. So he agrees with me.

†I would like to make this appeal to the hon. the Minister, following the appeal by the hon. member for Port Elizabeth Central this afternoon. I want to give hon. members of the House a brief summary of the history of Port Elizabeth. Port Elizabeth has, since 1820, been battling to be recognized for postal services and a proper post office building. I must pay tribute to the Postmaster-General and his staff by saying that the postal services are now fine. However, we still have the old building in Port Elizabeth and I should like to sketch its history. In 1820 Port Elizabeth had its first post office, which was housed in a small wood and iron shed at the foot of Jetty Street near the harbour. Port Elizabeth expanded to the extent that a new post office was established in approximately 1840, at the foot of Castle Hill on the site now occupied by the city treasurer’s offices. In 1859 the post office moved into the double-storeyed dwelling of the Harbour Engineer on Market Square, on a site thereafter occupied by the S.A. Reserve Bank. By the 1880’s we had reached prosperous times and the post office once again moved to premises, which were thereafter occupied by Union Castle.

Then followed a red letter day in the life of the Post Office at Port Elizabeth. On 25 June 1900, the Post Office moved into its present premises, which is situated behind the town hall. This was some 79 years ago, and the Post Office authorities investigated the position in Port Elizabeth very thoroughly some years ago. They came to the conclusion that, without any doubt, we needed a new general post office in Port Elizabeth. The Post Office investigated the matter so thoroughly that they came to the conclusion that we also needed a new site for the general post office. The postal authorities spent approximately R1 million buying this site with the object of erecting the general post office there.

There has even been a court case about it.

Yes. There has even been a court case about it. On 13 August of 1974, in reply to a question we were informed that it was anticipated that the building would commence in November 1980. The estimated date of completion was November 1984. The estimate cost was R8½ million. Today the cost would be closer to R12 million, if one had to take a guess. I am trying to indicate to the House that it was an established fact that we were going to get this post office. On 7 April 1975 I was advised that the professional people had been appointed, and that the work had reached the preliminary sketch-plan stage. On 2 April 1976 I was told that the planning of the new post office building in Main Street, Port Elizabeth, had been postponed for an indefinite period. On 18 February 1977 I was advised that, because of financial considerations, the new post office building had been deferred. Our financial climate has improved a lot, and we have heard from the hon. the Minister that he might get an extra R53 million in the latter half of this year and perhaps an extra R106 million in the following year. There has been a general upturn in the economy, and I feel that the situation has reached the stage where we now need this post office very urgently. I have no doubt that if the hon. the Minister and the Postmaster-General made a personal inspection of the situation, they would authorize this request as a matter of urgency. If the hon. the Minister and the Postmaster-General will come to Port Elizabeth, I am certain they will come to the irresistible conclusion that a new post office for Port Elizabeth is a necessity. I do not know whether the hon. the Minister has been to Port Elizabeth since he has been appointed to the new post, but I very much doubt it. I should now like to invite him formally to visit Port Elizabeth and to have a look at the situation. I hope he will reply to this by telling me that he and the Postmaster-General will make a trip to Port Elizabeth to view the situation in regard to the post office there. The building of a post office in Port Elizabeth will do much for the building industry there and for the professions associated with it. What is more important, however, is the fact that it will enable the people of Port Elizabeth to have the post office facilities which they are entitled to. If I had to send a telegram to the hon. the Minister, it would be sent urgently and the wording would be: “Please come to Port Elizabeth urgently.”

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Walmer will pardon me if I do not react to his arguments. I think he stated his case in a motivated way, and as I know the hon. the Minister and the Postmaster-General his plea will certainly not go unheard.

Turning to the budget which is at present before the House, I should like to refer to a saying which goes: “Nothing succeeds like success.” I believe this budget bears out this saying. I regard the budget as one which provides challenges for the future. If one subjects it to close scrutiny again for a moment, I think there are certain paragraphs to which one should refer again for record purposes. Those are provisions which are, to my mind, of some importance and significance for the Post Office in South Africa. I quote what the hon. the Minister said—

Sir, this is indeed a very great challenge! We heard noises, discordant noises, negative criticism and constructive criticism in this House, but I believe the key to an answer to the Opposition lies in the following paragraph of the hon. the Minister—

This reflects a well-considered study by the Post Office before making these tariff adjustments. I have said that we are facing challenging times. The Post Office has come to the end of a decade which was characterized by growth, change, prosperity and development in every field of its activities. As I summarize it, the most important reasons for this remarkable development over the past 10 years, have been the following: The streamlining of its management structure, the diligence, enthusiasm and dedication of its staff, the fact that the Post Office still aspires—and this is very important—to render the best and most efficient services at the lowest possible tariffs to South Africa and its people, the introduction of improved procedures and the continued application of strict financial discipline and control. This is of cardinal importance because of the economic climate we are experiencing at present.

It has been said during this debate that the Post Office also renders a number of uneconomic services. A loss of R41 million, in comparison with R29 million in the previous year, has now been recorded. These services are labour-intensive and as such are sensitive to any increase in staff expenses. The Post Office and its staff remained alert to these uneconomic services at all times and remedies where introduced. This is clearly reflected in the annual report which has been laid upon the Table here. Significant developments have taken place during the past decade in the field of the postal service. Not only did they contribute to improve and expedite the handling, despatch and delivery of mail items, but they also improved the quality of service to the public considerably. Over the past ten years the value of the total number of mail items handled at post offices in the Republic, increased by approximately 23,3% to R8,584 million in the 1977-’78 financial year. This House demands from the Post Office that postal services should keep pace with the times, and therefore there is a constant need for improved postal services and improved post office facilities. I am grateful that the hon. the Minister today also referred to self-service post offices, as the hon. member for Kempton Park called them. Self-service post offices are perhaps strange to hon. members in this House, but they are popular among the public. They are something the public takes care of and I feel that this concept of postal delivery should in fact be propagated to a greater degree by the Post Office. I wish to submit that these self-service post offices might perhaps be the concept for postal delivery in the distant future.

Mr. Chairman, allow me a moment to discuss mobile postal services as well. Mobile post office services are mainly used for providing postal facilities in the outskirts of urban areas and large country towns where a need for these facilities exists and where the establishment of permanent post offices is not yet justified. Let us look at the costs involved in a mobile postal service, as compared with a full-scale post office. The purchase price of a mobile post office unit is at present approximately R6 300 as against an erection cost of R25 000 just for a small one-man rural post office. There are at present 22 mobile post offices in operation. It is, however, my humble argument that the hon. the Minister should extend these services, and perhaps not only the services which are at present being rendered by such mobile post offices. We should look further ahead. We should, for example, look at our elderly people in homes for the aged and at people in hospitals. Could these mobile post office services not be extended so as to be of assistance to those people as well. I believe it would be very easy for a mobile post office to visit homes for the aged. Every month one finds large numbers of elderly people, often poor people, queuing up at post offices to receive their pensions, while mobile post offices could visit homes for the aged and enable elderly people to receive their pensions there. Annually the Post Office handles R323 million in pensions. That is the amount which is paid out on pensions, and therefore I believe that such a need does indeed exists.

I should like, however, to take my plea to the hon. the Minister a little further. If a mobile postal service cannot be established to render a service to the aged in hospitals, should we not consider postal services on an agency basis? Allow me to mention an example. There are security officials who convey money from one bank to another. Is it not possible that such security officials could be used to render such services on an agency basis? I am certain the hon. the Minister will look into this.

I now come to a matter which was raised by the hon. member for Durban North. Unfortunately, he is not in the House this evening. He referred to the diversification of post offices. To my mind, this is something which is very important. Let me use a practical example. In Vereeniging, we have the main post office, but a post office has also been established at a new multimarket. That post office has been functioning since 21 September 1978. According to statistics I was able to obtain, this post office in that multimarket complex is working very well indeed and is rendering service to many extensions in Vereeniging. In the times we are living it, it is, however, not only the Post Office which has to render a service. In a multimarket of this nature it is, in my opinion, the duty of the entrepreneur to accommodate the post office on his premises, because that post office attracts clients for him. I believe, therefore, that the entrepreneur should be encouraged to accommodate such post offices. I am certain that the hon. the Minister will react to this in his reply, and he might even be able to motivate these people to establish post offices at such complexes on an agency basis.

There was quite a lot of criticism aimed at postal deliveries and postal services in general today. However, must we always blame the post office? Should we not also concentrate on the public for a moment? Post Office Regulation No. 41 provides that every householder or occupant is obliged to erect a post-box at his front gate. Any politician who pays home visits to canvass votes, or perhaps simply drives up and down the streets to see what is going on, will agree with me that post-boxes are not to be found at the front gate of every house. Is it not time the public, and particularly those who wish to level negative criticism at the Government and the Post Office, looked to see whether or not they have post boxes next to their gates?

There is a Post Office regulation which was made in 1959 and which provides that new buildings which were erected after 31 December 1976 are required to provide post boxes at their main entrances on the ground floor, post boxes in which mail items for the tenants of the building can be delivered. If one makes inquiries at the post office, however, one finds that to some extent, there has been a positive reaction, but I do not believe that the reaction so far has been satisfactory. I think the attention of the owners of those buildings should be drawn to that fact. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, …

Hear, hear!

Well, well, I must say that I am not used to such acclaim when I get to my feet. It is a very nice change.

I want to raise one or two matters with the hon. the Minister, and I should like to start off by expressing my appreciation for the cooperation I have received in the matter of the retention of the Norwood post office in my constituency. It was the cause of considerable unhappiness to the older residents in that part of my constituency when they discovered that the old post office in Grant Avenue was to be moved to the hypermarket some distance away, far too great a distance for them to walk As a result of the very considerable energy expended by the city councillor, Mrs. Janet Levine, in the area, a campaign was launched amongst the residents and it was possible to get a petition framed. The authorities were extremely co-operative as a result of all this. I want to extend my appreciation for this not only to the Postmaster-General and his department, but ultimately, I presume, to the hon. the Minister himself. [Interjections.] Much to the relief of the residents of Norwood, they are again being served by the old post office which has been retained, albeit under a new name which is still to be decided upon but which I gather is going to be …

Helen’s Hide-out.

No, Grant Park—not even Page’s Peep-show. The post office at the new hypermarket is of course functioning as well. We are very pleased indeed about that.

There was a suggestion at one time that, if the old post office could not be retained, a mobile post office be used for the area. Here I associate myself with the hon. member for Overvaal, who has just sat down, who mentioned the use of mobile post offices, and I ask the hon. the Minister whether it would not be possible to use more mobile post offices in the Black townships. There are very considerable distances to be covered in these townships and there are a lot of old people living there as well. I think that the communities in the various Black urban townships would be well served if the hon. the Minister could use more mobile post offices in those areas. I do not know whether any are in fact being used there at the present time, but certainly I think it is an idea worth considering.

I am very pleased to hear of the quite enormous increase in the number of telephones in Soweto, because it has been the subject of real discontent among the more well-to-do residents of Soweto that they have not been able to get telephones. I must say that the introduction of an automatic exchange for those areas is an enormous relief to anybody who has to get through to those townships. One might just as well be telephoning Timbuctoo. It is virtually impossible to get through. If one does succeed in getting through, the line is so faint that one can barely hear what is being said. This is, therefore, indeed an improvement. Soweto, after all, is the largest Black city south of the Sahara with well over a million inhabitants. Even the 14 000 telephones the hon. the Minister contemplates will be there by 1981 is still relatively speaking really a small number of telephones. It is nevertheless a great improvement on the position that existed in 1975 when the then Minister of Posts and Telecommunications told the then member for Parktown, Mr. Rene de Villiers, in reply to a question, that there were only 985 private telephones in the whole of Soweto. In 1976 there were 1 171 private telephones in Soweto. According to the hon. the Minister there are now 6 000 automatic telephones in Soweto and there will be 14 000 by 1981. That is an improvement.

I should like to ask the hon. the Minister why it is not possible to have the details of long-distance telephone calls reflected in one’s telephone account. One gets astronomical accounts these days and I am sure that they include a number of long-distance calls. One would like to be able to get some idea of how much is being spent on these long-distance calls and to which distant area they are being placed.

Finally, I should like to ask the hon. the Minister why one has to look for the diplomatic corps in the Yellow Pages of the Pretoria directory. If one looks for the diplomatic corps in the directory, one is referred to the Yellow Pages and one finds them—I cannot remember exactly where they are placed—somewhere between “Diesel Engines” and “Discotheques”. I think it would be a great improvement if diplomats could be simply listed in the ordinary Pretoria directory.

Mr. Chairman, at this late hour on a Wednesday evening I should like to agree with the hon. member for Houghton specifically in regard to the mobile service to old-age homes, a service which does not necessarily involve mobile post offices alone. In the Wonderboom constituency in Pretoria North the facilities provided by the post office for the payment of old-age pensions and so on to old people in the vicinity are not very efficient. There are a few large old-age homes. I should like to associate myself with what the hon. members for Houghton and Overvaal said about the possibility that these funds could be paid out on a security basis. I do not think I want to support the idea of the mobile post office. I prefer to refer specifically to the transmission of the funds and amounts which can be transported to these old-age homes on a security contract basis by these organizations that undertake it. Use can then be made of the existing facilities at these old-age homes to pay the pensions or other amounts to these people. We should be much obliged if the hon. the Minister and the Post Office would give attention to this matter.

In the rest of the time at my disposal I should like to address myself to the hon. member for Hillbrow. In his typical machinegun style he jumped into the deep end of the budget and almost drowned. As I see it he has now also jumped in at the deep end of the citizen band radio system and I think he is drowning there, too. I think he referred to the committee of inquiry into radio communication on the short and medium wavelengths.

He is on the wrong wavelength.

My hon. colleague says that he is on the wrong wavelength. He is, and I shall indicate this in a moment. The only statement he made with which I agree is that it is important that we make an appeal to the public not to make injudicious purchases of these sets which are now on the market illegally because it could cost them money and cause them embarrassment. In the few minutes at my disposal I should like to make an effort to rectify briefly the statements he made. He referred to the frequency band which is supposed to extend from 26,9 to 30 MHz. That is in fact wrong because there is a wavelength extending from 27,5 to 29,79 MHz which is intended for the amateur radio operators and meteorological stations and which has nothing to do with the citizen band or with civil defence. Apart from those two bands there are three other bands in this frequency spectrum, namely the A band, the B band and the C band. The A band extends from 26,965 to 27,275 MHz.

Read page 7.

I have already read page 7. I just want to say to the hon. member that I had the privilege of serving on this committee under the chairmanship of Mr. Gouws, the Deputy Postmaster-General. It was a great pleasure to serve under Mr. Gouws on this committee.

This A band has 27 channels, 18 of which are used for private purposes and nine of which are available to the Police, the Defence Force, the Post Office and the SABC. There are another five channels in this band intended for radio control purposes. The last nine channels of this band, viz. at the upper end of the spectrum, will now be made available for the citizen band. I just want to tell the hon. member that the statement made that the Americans are now going to dump equipment in South Africa is not quite true, because 14 million of these 40 channel systems to which he referred are already being used in America. The idea is that we shall not use a different system in South Africa because it would not be economically acceptable to the people since the cost of having one’s own set would be too high. What will now happen, therefore, is that only nine channels of the 40 channel systems will be used. They are the last nine channels on the A band from frequencies 27,185 MHz to 27,275 MHz. Those nine channels will be made available for the citizen band. The hon. member made appeals for a seal to be broken in emergency conditions. That is not possible. The system to be made available to the public will only be able to use those nine channels. They will not be able to use any other channels. Therefore there will also not be any interference with the Police, the Defence Force, the SABC or the Post Office frequencies from those sets. The reason why those sets are being placed at the top of the band are that the sets use 4 W power and the other sets in the A band use only 100 mW power. That is why they are being placed at the top end so that the output of the sets cannot cause interference with the sets with the lower outputs.

Perhaps I should also just deal briefly with the B and C bands for the sake of completeness. The B band extends from 27,29 MHz to 27,5 MHz and there are 12 channels for civil defence radio networks. Then, too, there are seven channels for municipalities and Government departments, one channel for security guards and two reserve channels. That is on the B band. The C band, which is a number of MHz away from this band, viz. 29,71 MHz to 29,985 MHz, has four channels for civil defence radio units and two for links between pleasure and other commercial boats, something to which the hon. member also referred. Fourteen of the channels are for the management of farming activities. Last year the hon. member for Mooi River made a fine plea for these farming channels. The C channel now contains 14 of them. There is one for fire-fighting, one for Government departments and one for reserves. Perhaps I should briefly quote the recommendation appearing on page 2 of the report of the committee of inquiry. It concerns the utilization of the B and C bands for farming purposes and for civil defence. It reads as follows—

As far as the regulations are concerned, the fact is, as the hon. member for Hillbrow said, that they will be available in April and these regulations are specifically aimed at eliminating interference in other systems by the citizen band system. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, all hon. members have now congratulated the hon. the Minister on his first budget in his present portfolio. Like other hon. members, however, I also want to point out that he previously occupied the portfolio of Social Welfare and Pensions. Consequently I find it very ironic that the hon. the Minister should have chosen 1 October as the date on which the new tariff increases are to come into effect. As a former Minister of Social Welfare and Pensions the hon. the Minister ought to know that 1 October is the date which every pensioner looks forward to every year because that is when they receive their small annual increase. I therefore think it was very unfortunate that the hon. the Minister had to choose that date. What is the point of giving with one hand and taking away with the other?

A number of the hon. the Minister’s predecessors have also announced increases in tariffs from time to time, just as he has done now. One thing that the hon. the Minister must take into account is that the effect of such a step is consumer resistance, a factor which is normally underestimated by Ministers. A good example of this is what a former Minister of Posts and Telecommunications said after announcing tariff increases in 1972. I believe that the hon. the Minister will be compelled to repeat a number of the statements he made then when he discusses this matter again next year.

†Referring to financial problems the then hon. Minister said that those which could primarily be raised were, in the first place, a temporary cooling off of economic activities and, in the second place, a normal counter-reaction to tariff increases introduced with effect from 1 April 1971. The third one he mentioned was the high rate of inflation and price escalation. He also mentioned a fourth one. That was devaluation.

*However the hon. the Minister will find that when he has to discuss this matter again in a year’s time, reference will again have to be made to each of those statements with the possible exception of devaluation. He will have to make use of those statements once again in order to explain why the expected improvement could not be effected. It is inevitably the case that a general tariff increase, instead of pegging losses, simply results in losses continuing to grow. Before referring specifically to further details, I just want to point out that we accept that postal services run at a loss throughout the world. If, however, we look at the period from 1967 up to the present we find that losses have increased from R4,3 million to R38,3 million. This is an increase of almost 900%. During the Second Reading debate I referred the hon. member for Virginia to the index of operating expenditure and revenue. However, he was unable to refer to a single instance that was anywhere near comparable with the mentioned increase of 900%. The closest was capital expenditure, with 767%. In this instance, therefore, the deficit increased at a far greater rate than in the case of operating revenue or operating expenditure, for example. Another important aspect that is also underestimated is the fact that during the same period there was a growth of only 26% in the volume of articles handled. Instead of thinking that the increased volume had a share in the increased losses, in fact the contrary caused it. In fact, it is more the lack of growth in volume in the Post Office that is a reason for the heavier losses suffered.

Why is there a lack of growth?

The lack of growth is evident from the fact that the volume increased by only 26%.

Yes, but why is there a lack of growth?

There was a certain degree of consumer resistance. One can price oneself out of the market.

[Inaudible.]

It is not just the telephone. We are discussing the volume and are drawing certain conclusions from it. I should like to draw other comparisons as well. Over the same period the staff index increased by 149, viz. by 49%. The index of income per staff member rose from R100 to R208. That sounds very praiseworthy, but on page 77 of the report it is clear that over that period the consumer index has also increased from R100 to R214. In point of fact, therefore, the increase in income per staff member has not even kept pace with the consumer price index over the same period. When one takes those figures into account and when a speech such as that delivered by the hon. member for Durban North is made, in which a plea is made for sustained improvement in productivity, one really has to give it very serious consideration. Actually politicians are always making themselves unpopular by talking about productivity, particularly because it can be said that the Opposition is trying to maintain that the officials are not doing their work properly. We know that there are many cases in the Post Office where productivity has in fact been increased due to mechanization and electronic aids. However, there are many traditional and labour intensive posts in the Post Office which require consistent and in-depth investigation.

There are a number of other matters that I also wish to deal with. Firstly I want to express my disappointment that it was necessary for the Post Office to impose a prohibition on certain advertisements promoting defence bonus bonds. I refer of course to the advertisements relating to defence bonds which could lead to certain people regarding it as a method of gambling and a lottery. I do understand that moral considerations apply. However, what was the point of trying to ban these advertisements while the same type of advertisement appears in newspapers and other periodicals in any event? I accept and realize that there are certain churches and people with religious considerations who would not be prepared to establish a lottery in South Africa. However, two unfortunate factors are involved here. Firstly, as regards the defence bonus bonds we had to deal with politicking from the outset because people tried to maintain that by taking part in this one was in fact gambling. People were just forgetting that, when these advertisement made their appearance. Once again it was a question of waking sleeping dogs. Secondly, I am simply unable to agree that anything of this kind would have led to unnecessary wastage of money in this regard. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Hillbrow who is not at present in this House said that he was extremely shocked at this budget. I want to remind the hon. member that when he was a member of the city council of Johannesburg they strangled us with rates. They announced increases one after the other and eventually it got so bad that people could not even swim free of charge anymore. Our people even had to pay to be able to swim. Therefore we on this side of the House are completely shock resistant with regard to this type of matter.

Both the hon. the Minister and the Postmaster-General have once again shown the country as they have done over the past few years, that they provide essential services in the most economic way possible. They have established the lowest possible tariff structure and have achieved the highest possible productivity among the staff by means of incentives such as favourable working conditions, favourable conditions of service and favourable training opportunities. We are very grateful for this.

It is very clear that tariffs, which were last increased in 1971, had to be increased again. I am convinced that hon. members understand this. This, too, is why this budget has been so well received. Looking more closely at the tariff increases we see that the use of postcards—they are particularly so popular due to certain competitions for which they are used—is now going to fall away completely. Moreover, one finds that periodicals can now no longer be registered as newspapers. The question is whether there should not be a greater rationalization of periodicals and newspapers as regards their contents and weight as well.

I say this particularly in view of the fact that as the hon. the Minister mentioned, one of our periodicals had to be subsidized by R240 000 per annum. The subsidy paid to all periodicals together amounts to more than R1 million. In view of this it is clear that this type of postal article is not being transmitted advantageously at the moment.

In the few minutes at my disposal I should like to refer hon. members to the technological development that has taken place and is still taking place today. As far as telephone services are concerned there is for example the “instant call-making” system by means of which one need only place a card in a telephone and then that telephone will dial the correct number itself. In this way one never dials a wrong number. Then too there is the “contrafusion” system enabling people to sit in different studios and make contact with each other over a distance of kilometres. Then too there is a system whereby, at the press of a button, one can cause the face of a person with whom one is speaking to appear on a screen.

I know that there is a telephone with ten buttons and pressing each of the buttons causes the face of a different person to appear. This is a very good system for the Opposition because then one cannot confuse the PFP and the NRP. When the hon. member for Houghton is in Johannesburg and speaks to the hon. leader of the PFP here in Cape Town she can at least see who she is talking to. In this way the possibility of her speaking to the hon. member for Durban Point by mistake is therefore eliminated. It is very clear that there can be no confusion in this regard because one can see whom one is speaking to.

There is indeed a great deal of consternation as far as their policy is concerned as well, in that they simply do not know where they stand. By way of this video system one will also be able to see their national convention. Ten members will be able to sit together there and we shall be able to see which non-Whites they invite. In my opinion it would be very interesting to see something of this nature because one would then know how their policy differs. The hon. the Minister is now giving those hon. members six months and they are of course going to publish a new constitution every month until October. There will now probably be six different constitutions in accordance with which we can form an idea of their policy. Then one will be able to realize that the expense this matter entails can be very great.

After all, it is the NP that has brought about all these technological developments. There have been the Franzsen Commission and the Wiehahn Commission among others that have decided on this matter and that have prepared the ground for the favourable budget before the House this evening. We are grateful for all the good work done in regard to telephone services and telecommunication services.

To the hon. member for Houghton I want to say in this regard that it is very clear that a great deal has been done in Soweto as well. Indeed, she can see in this budget what is being envisaged there at present. What I find very interesting, however, is the fact that in 1970, 100 000 questionnaires were circulated in Soweto alone by the Department of Posts and Telecommunications. Of those 100 000 questionnaires, only 1 400 were returned with the request to install telephone services. That was the situation in 1970. In 1973 only 400 of those 1 400 said that they were still interested in a telephone service. That is because the NP has narrowed the wage gap to such an extent that those people can now afford telephones. It is the NP that has brought about this tremendous expansion in Soweto and therefore we convey our sincere thanks to the hon. the Minister and the Postmaster-General for everything they have done in this specific field.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Rosettenville reminded me of the fact that sometimes when I use a telephone, provided for me by the National Party Administration, I get a very jarring, horrible noise in my ear. That, with respect, is precisely what the hon. member for Rosettenville did for me this evening.

I want to address the hon. the Minister in regard to a local matter concerning my constituency, namely the Yeoville post office. Because of the conditions which existed in the Yeoville post office and the size of this post office, we agitated for many years and eventually found that we were going to get a new post office, which was duly provided. One should be grateful that, with the appointment of a new Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, a new post office in Yeoville was provided. But what has happened in reality, is that the post office now seems to be more crowded than was the case with the old post office. We seem to have more problems in the new post office than we had in the old post office. When one conveys these comments to the hon. the Minister in writing—and he is quite an efficient, careful fellow—in the early part of February this year, one gets a reply on the date before the Post Office budget debate. That is quite skilful planning and quite skilful replying.

I was busy with the budget.

So, one gets a reply the day before the budget and the reply unfortunately is a negative one. But where there is a very easy solution for the extension of that post office, which would make it much easier to serve the people in the area. The accommodation in the hon. the Minister’s view is adequate and there is no need to do anything further. This evening the hon. the Minister was invited to Port Elizabeth. Now, Yeoville is a much more attractive place than Port Elizabeth. [Interjections.] It is a much more attractive place and I would like the hon. the Minister to see for himself, in my company, the congestion and the problems which are caused in the Yeoville post office. At the same time I will certainly show him the other beautiful sights in my constituency. I think he will be enriched by this. With respect, I would like him to see this.

There is one other matter I want to touch on in the short time at my disposal. The hon. the Minister has no difficulty in increasing tariffs, but my complaint is that he has decreased interest rates. I refer, for example, to the Post Office certificates. Many of the people that I represent are pensioners. Many of them, encouraged by the hon. the Minister and his predecessor, have invested their money in Post Office certificates. They rely on it for their income. What happens? One finds there is an announcement which says that as from such and such a date the rate of interest is reduced. I have tried to indicate, as I have done before, that the impact on the people who save for their old age, in order to provide themselves with an income, means that they are now having a reduction in their interest rates which means that their living standards drop. The hon. the Minister goes to great lengths to explain that we have inflation in South Africa and that the cost of everything is rising. But those elderly people are hit by inflation on the one hand, and on the other hand hit by the reduction in interest rates on the part of the Post Office savings certificates, amongst other investment media. I would have hoped that the hon. the Minister might have said that in his Post Office he will have a savings medium which is available— as it is in other countries overseas and the hon. the Minister has recently had a look at it—to elderly people where they can obtain a decent rate of interest secured for a long period of time. That is what one would expect in the particular circumstances from the hon. the Minister and I would ask him to consider that sort of savings medium, particularly for our elderly people.

I now want to touch on one other point very briefly, and that is the question of stamps. It has been said before, by my hon. friends on the other side of the House, that we are very conservative, but I do want to make a very brief appeal to the hon. the Minister to make some of our postage stamps a little more exciting and to have a little more modern art on them, something which is a little more “with it” in the times we are living in, so that the stamps can be a little more attractive overseas. People could then possibly see that we in South Africa are not just conservative. They would be able to see that there are many of us who are “with it” in the world of today, and we would also be able to show that the modern artists in South Africa are as good as any others in the world. I should like to see some stamps that project that modern art image to the overseas world and to the South African public.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Yeoville must please excuse me if I do not react to what he said because in the ten minutes at my disposal I should like to pay tribute in the first place to the recently retired Postmaster of Boksburg, Mr. Gerhard de Villiers, and his staff. In his year of pension he succeeded in motivating his staff to such an extent that they won a floating trophy for the best post office on the Witwatersrand. I think hon. members will agree with me that this is typical of the staff of the Post Office. This is the kind of award which the public of South Africa can proudly hand to the Postmaster-General, Mr. Rive, and his 72 000 officials today. Last year, when the Financial Mail asked the Postmaster-General how he had succeeded in halving the shortage of telephones since 1973, his reply was: “By means of motivated staff, sound planning and financial freedom.” The hon. the Minister can justifiably be proud of this department which, in its short period of autonomy, has proved that it has been able to extricate itself from the tangled problems it was faced with earlier. At the same time it ushered in a new era for South Africa in which it was instrumental in the establishment of a new industry, that of telecommunications. It was officials of this department who, a few years ago, were faithful to the rallying call of our national anthem: “At thy call we shall not falter.” When people were asked to work longer hours for the same wage those people were among the first to do so voluntarily. When the Postmaster-General asked in 1977 that the Post Office be assisted to eliminate the backlog in telephone services on the Witwatersrand, approximately 300 departmental technicians from various parts of the country worked for months voluntarily, far from their homes, to make their contribution to that chapter of success in the Post Office story.

The Financial Mail of 2 June 1978 published a supplement on the Post Office and its activities. That publication described in detail the planning in the Department of Posts and Telecommunications and on the front page the editor summed up the department’s dreams for the future with the fine title: “The sky is the limit.” How many people in South Africa realize what the Post Office has achieved over the past 10 years? The number of telephone calls to abroad has increased sixteenfold and the number of telex subscribers has increased fourfold. Data services increased from 60 to 7 580 and the mainline network was enlarged from 2 458 km to 12 847 km. The number of vehicles in the Post Office has also increased over the past five years by 19%. When one plans purposefully one can expect results of this kind and the Minister can rightly say to his officials: “The sky is the limit.” Thanks to the investment by South Africans in their Post Office savings banks, it has been possible for the department to plough this income back into the Post Office in order to provide better equipment and better services. This has enabled us to become the leader in Africa and we possess an asset which shines more brightly than the Cullinan diamond; the best telecommunications network in Africa. The Post Office, with its telecommunications section, is not merely a material asset to our country, but also contributes towards the upliftment of all our peoples by means of the employment opportunities and training facilities it provides. The report refers, inter alia, to an amount of R150 000 voted for bursaries, and the Chair established at the University of Pretoria during 1975, to which an annual amount of R20 000 is contributed.

The enthusiasm of the Post Office staff has had a ripple effect on other South Africans who have also had their eyes on the stars and have in turn assisted in bringing up and looking after the telecommunications infant. This infant industry has become a provider of employment affording an income to thousands of families in South Africa. In the edition of the Financial Mail referred to, the Postmaster-General foresees that R3 billion will be spent by the Post Office on telecommunications equipment over the next ten years. Because I am looking at this department through the eyes of a newcomer, I should like to ask whether it is not time for the telecommunications departments of other Government departments and also those of the semi-State departments perhaps to be combined and placed under one roof in one department.

I ask this in the interests of the orderly development of this infant industry and of telecommunications in South Africa. Due to the strategic role played by this industry in the present-day world it is essential that the State should assist in establishing this industry in South Africa so that we can maintain our position of leadership in Africa and can become independent in the field of communications in the military sphere. Because the Post Office is making its contribution towards training South Africa’s people we must also consider requesting the suppliers of equipment to contribute pro rata to our training institutions in view of our purchases from them. Our industry and population will benefit from this in that our manpower will also be able to undergo training based on their trade with us. I have that R3 billion in mind. I should be very pleased if it could be ploughed back into South Africa.

I want to request that the department should investigate the construction of a post office in Boksburg North. Not only has that post office now become essential, but the city council there is becoming somewhat uneasy about the stand available for it which has been lying fallow for a number of decades now along the Main Reef Road of the Witwatersrand. I want to go so far as to say that if the Post Office does not see its way clear to developing that stand within the foreseeable future they must give up the idea of using that stand and perhaps cede it to another Government department which will in fact be able to develop it. Such undeveloped stands have a restricting effect on the business area and this specific stand is right in the middle of the business district of Boksburg North. Apart from the loss to the city council in rates and the fact that they obtain no income from services which they made available decades ago, they could perhaps use it for other purposes.

I thank the hon. the Minister for this sound budget in which provision is made for the Post Office to spend R70 million in equipment which will be manufactured in Boksburg. It enables our industries there to grow. Quartz crystals which up to now have had to be imported from South America are shortly to be cultivated in Boksburg. This gives an indication that the industrialists are prepared to make South Africa independent in regard to this strategic material for post office and defence equipment. This company in Boksburg provides employment to approximately 2 000 people and has set aside R100 000 for training institutions for all races in our area over the past year. In this way the one hand washes the other. I want to express my thanks to the Postmaster-General and his staff for the co-operation they afford to South African companies to assist them to grow to the high level achieved by this company.

Mr. Chairman, I am delighted to have the opportunity of making either the last speech or the last speech but one in this Committee Stage. I hope that the plea I shall address to the hon. the Minister will ring urgently in his ears while he is making his reply to this debate. I particularly want to refer to the urgent circumstances relating to the Bergvliet telephone exchange, which is one of the disaster areas, telephonically speaking, in this country. Bergvliet is a small part of the Constantia Valley. It comprises roughly one-eighth of the total area of that valley. It consists of only some 2 000 or 3 000 houses. Telephonically speaking it includes the areas of Meadowridge and part of Diep River. However, it is little more than a village. Now, this area is short of over 2 000 telephones. If one calculates this on the basis of the total national shortage of telephone services, one will find that this small area of Constantia represents 3% of the total national need. As far as I am aware there is only one place where the situation is worse and that is Soweto. I hear that Soweto has a shortage of 5 000 telephones. Bergvliet and Soweto together represent the disaster area, the telephonic desert of South Africa. The telephone shortages in these two areas account for 10% of the urgent telephone shortage in South Africa. I do not plead Bergvliet’s case against that of Soweto. I plead for them both, because they are the Third World as far as our telephone system is concerned. We have here a very strong case and I believe that what I have said, is not greatly exaggerated. I have in my possession a letter from the Regional Director in the Western Cape. It is one of many letters that have been sent to would-be subscribers in the Meadowridge-Bergvliet area. It reads—

This is an official letter from the telephone department—

This letter was received by somebody in Bergvliet, just within a stone’s throw of Cape Town. The Regional Director could not give an indication when a remedy would be possible, but I can do so because I made further inquiries. The indication is that perhaps by 1981 it will be possible to supply these additional services. The hon. the Minister has said that he aspires to the day when he will be able to supply telephones within 48 hours after application. We look forward with him to that day. I want to tell him that in Bergvliet in the Constantia Valley it is going to take one year and 363 days longer than 48 hours, and so the hon. the Minister has a long way to go in making up this backlog.

I believe the hon. the Minister is making great progress in supplying the telephone requirements of South Africa. I rise here this evening to draw his urgent and very particular attention to what remains a black hole in the improving system. I believe he must give special attention to this matter. It is not the average situation in respect of delays in supplying telephones, but a very special situation. If the hon. the Minister will give urgent attention to this matter, he will be meeting a need which is quite extraordinary in the general context of telephone services in South Africa. This is not just my own special blending, but is borne out also by a good deal of official correspondence. I believe a building for a telephone exchange system for Bergvliet is being planned for 1981. The last one was built in 1960. Bergvliet is a rapidly developing area. It is an area which contains a large number of business people and young people who are making their way in life. They are totally frustrated in their need to obtain these telephone services. 1960 is a long time back and 1981 is quite a long time ahead. I believe that in this special case special services and special efforts are warranted. I appeal very strongly to the hon. the Minister to deal with Bergvliet and with other emergency areas in regard to telephone systems, and to try to ensure that this special need can be met with a minimum of delay.

Mr. Chairman, I should like to thank all hon. members who again participated in the debate. I think they conducted the debate on a high level, adhered to the facts and avoided unnecessary politicking. Consequently I shall try to maintain the same standard in my reply.

†In the first instance the hon. member for Hillbrow addressed us and as usual he managed to get in quite a number of requests in 10 minutes. I shall try to deal with them seriatim. In the first instance he suggested that we investigate the posting of letters on buses. We have looked into this question before and we have found it to be impracticable. Maybe we can discuss the reasons for that at a later stage, but at present I am limiting myself to this brief reply.

The hon. member also referred to the improvement in delivery times and in this regard I should like to tell him that statistics prove that we have actually substantially improved on our performance during the last 12 months.

The hon. member raised a very important point when he referred to the possible dumping of radio sets with regard to the new situation which has been created by the report of the committee and the admission of a citizens band on a certain frequency. We cannot control the import and sale of sets, but sets must comply with the specific requirements that we lay down. We join with the hon. member in warning potential purchasers that they should not allow themselves to be misled by salesmen and they must make sure that sets comply with the prescribed requirements of the Post Office before they purchase them. I think it is a timely warning, and I am pleased that the hon. member has raised the matter.

He requested me to consider the implications of the breaking of a seal on the radio set in the event of an emergency. I think the hon. member is asking me to sanction the breaking of the law by asking me to sanction the breaking of the seal. Surely, he realizes that that will be illegal. I cannot take this matter any further than to say that whatever is done in a state of emergency obviously will be taken into account by any court of law as a factor in meting out punishment.

The hon. member also referred to the use of scooters. I want to assure him that we already make extensive use of scooters for the delivery and collecting of post in order to save fuel. He once again raised the matter of electrically operated vehicles. With regard to that aspect we feel that we cannot be the leaders in this field. The evidence at the moment is inconclusive. I cannot take the matter further apart from saying that we shall keep a close watch on developments in this regard. Should it ever appear to be worthwhile to investigate the matter further, we shall definitely do so.

*The hon. member also referred to Pretoria and wanted to know whether Pretoria was being given preferential treatment. I want to give him the assurance that we are very careful and try to be very fair in our spending pattern. I do not think that Pretoria is in any way being given preferential treatment over any other area. With regard to the envisaged improvements around Church Square, I can give the hon. member the assurance that we have already made great progress with our planning. As he knows, we have purchased a new building adjoining Strydom Square, where we are going to establish our regional office, and where we are going to establish our large new post office in the place of the existing Central Street Post Office. This will drastically reduce our capital spending in respect of the building adjoining the square, the old main post office, which will remain the main post office. A great deal of progress has already been made with our planning, and there are no real problems. It is merely a question of completing our organization and finalizing our plans. After that, we shall soon be able to commence work there. Personally we are very unhappy about the conditions there. Our employees are definitely not working under ideal conditions and we should like to rectify them as soon as possible.

†The hon. member asked me a question about the payment of bonuses. I can inform him that we have paid those bonuses.

*The hon. member for Bethlehem made a very positive contribution I want to congratulate him on his appointment as a member of the Postage Stamp Advisory Committee. I hope that he and the hon. member for Johannesburg North, who also serves on that committee, will hit it off… [Interjections.] … and that they will make a contribution there in a non-political atmosphere. Since the hon. member for Johannesburg North is not here this evening, I accept that the hon. member for Bethlehem will convey to him the request of the hon. member for Yeoville in regard to modern art. The hon. member for Yeoville may as well discuss the matter with the hon. member for Johannesburg North. He is a member of that committee, and most of the recommendations which are made to me come from that committee. Consequently he has a direct channel at his disposal here. I have made a mental note of what he said. In this connection he may as well make use of his contacts in his own party.

The hon. member for Bethlehem is too conservative for me. [Interjections.]

It seems to me there are other divisions in that party which I was unaware of. The hon. member for Bethlehem asked us to allow the issuing of a permanent postage stamp series to coincide with an historic occasion in future. It is our object to issue a new permanent series every five years, and to have it coincide as far as possible, with Republic Day, 31 March. It is the intention to release the next permanent series on 31 March 1981.

The hon. member for Umhlanga said thank you—and I want to thank him for doing so— for the extensions in his constituency in particular, as well as for those in the rest of Natal. I am pleased that matters are going better with him than they are in Howick. I hope he will be happy with what we are going to accomplish there.

†The hon. member criticized the wording of a letter—a standard letter—addressed to the next of kin on the occasion of the death of a telephone subscriber. I want to give the hon. member the undertaking that I will look into this matter. The wording of the letter, as he read it out here, does seem to be somewhat unfeeling, stark and unsympathetic. As an attorney I used to become extremely irritated by the letters I received from the Master of the Supreme Court if, for instance, I happened to be only two weeks late in submitting an account. He used to threaten me with gaol and that type of thing. I can assure the hon. member that I have sympathy with people in these circumstances. I will look into the matter, but on the other hand I have to take him up on one point, i.e. the question of the R10-charge, which is a different case altogether. The law, and not the Post Office, requires that certain actions must follow upon the death of a person who entered into an agreement. Those actions involve us in certain administrative procedures. We cannot simply let it pass without levying a charge. If we should do that, we would somehow have to find the money to pay that particular official. Therefore I believe the charge is necessary. However, the tone of the wording of the letter is something we will definitely investigate.

The hon. member also made suggestions in connection with the combating of vandalism. We will look into that. I can assure the hon. member that we have tried almost every conceivable method of countering vandalism. We will, however, investigate the matter again. I will read the hon. member’s speech in Hansard very carefully. I could not really follow exactly what method he was trying to explain, but if we feel that there is any possibility of using that particular method I will discuss it with him again.

The hon. member for Houghton was very friendly in her address to me. I want to thank the hon. member for her kind remarks. I am becoming a little bit worried, however. Yesterday the hon. member voted with us in regard to Black universities. She even shared this bench with the hon. the Minister of National Education and with me. And this evening she went on to praise me. Many people would describe that as a kiss of death. [Interjections.] I must say though that if I had to accept the kiss of death I would prefer it coming from the hon. member for Houghton rather than from the hon. member for Hillbrow. [Interjections.]

[Inaudible.]

The hon. member for Houghton wants us to furnish all details with our accounts regarding long-distance calls. Unfortunately, I have to tell her that we would find that impossible because of the cost involved. To do that, we would have to install fairly expensive machinery at each exchange. Therefore I suggest that the hon. member for Houghton and other users follow two courses. The first is that they should make a careful study of the information contained in each telephone directory, from which they will be able to ascertain exactly what the cost is of each long-distance call which they make. They should then just look at their watches and make sure that they do not overstep the mark. I know it is very difficult for the hon. member to be short in any discussion …

I find that you men talk more than any woman I know! [Interjections.]

I have another solution for the hon. member, and that is that there is a special meter which she can hire from us at a fairly low charge and at which she can look while she talks. [Interjections.] It will indicate to her low long she has already spoken. The use of that will ensure that the hon. member cuts her discussion short and will also ensure that her account is not too high.

The hon. member also referred to the listing of the diplomatic corps in the yellow pages. We will look into the matter and will let her know by letter what the problem is and how it can be solved.

*The hon. members for Walmer and Port Elizabeth Central made a fervent appeal during the Second Reading debate, and again now during the Committee Stage, for a new post office in Port Elizabeth. This matter has a bit of a history, and I must ask the hon. members to listen to it for a while.

In the late ’sixties the municipality of Port Elizabeth brought it to the attention of the Department of Posts and Telecommunications that freeways were being planned which would encroach on most of the post office premises, and also that a city centre was being planned on the remaining land. Pursuant to this, and considering the age of the building—approximately 80 years—and as a result of the inconvenience of the Post Office, it was decided to acquire new premises for both an executive post office and a regional head office. The property known as Richardson’s Wool Washeries was acquired for this purpose in 1971 and a post office, Diazland, a postmens’ depot and certain engineering activities were in the meantime established in existing improvements on the premises, while other available accommodation was being leased. A formal agreement has not yet been concluded with the municipality on the alienation of the present post office premises, and the indications are that the envisaged planning of the municipality has been shelved. Hon. members will appreciate that this to a certain extent places us between the devil and the deep blue sea. In spite of the age and the inconvenient arrangement of the public facilities of the existing post office, and the removal of postmen to new premises, the old building is still in such a condition that it will continue to meet the needs for several years to come. The Department of Posts and Telecommunications completed repairs and renovations to the building to the amount of R37 900 on 30 January 1979, and the electrical rewiring of the building is at present under discussion. The planning of the new building—we already have a site for it—only progressed as far as the early sketch plan stage and was suspended in 1976 in view of the financial situation and other priorities, the adequacy of the existing executive post office, albeit old and functionally inconvenient, and the suitable accommodation of a regional office in the enlarged automatic exchange building. Nevertheless, this service still appears on our capital programme at an estimated cost of R11,6 million. At present, however, it is still being held in abeyance.

I want to thank the hon. member for his invitation to visit Port Elizabeth. He heard how this in turn elicited an invitation from the hon. member for Yeoville to visit his area. As the hon. member for Rosettenville said, new telephone applications result in more applications, and in the same way invitations result in further invitations. If I were to accept every invitation from every MP who feels that the Post Office should spend more money in his constituency, I would become a totally itinerant Minister. However, I want to give the hon. member the assurance that as soon as I visit Port Elizabeth again—it is such an important growth point in South Africa that I go there regularly in any case—I promise to visit the post office there. I shall contact the hon. member and I am prepared to conduct an investigation with him if he is in Port Elizabeth at that stage. We can then familiarize ourselves fully with the situation there. I have now furnished the hon. member with the facts and I do not want to arouse any further expectations in him, because we have priorities to determine. There are other areas that are really experiencing greater problems at this stage. In the meanwhile it would be a good thing if the hon. member would negotiate with his municipality in order to obtain greater clarity as to precisely where the developments are going to take place.

The hon. member for Durban Central adopted an interesting standpoint on the struggle the postal services are having to survive. He said that a consumer resistance to letters had developed. I do not think there are any scientific grounds for such a statement. What is happening in our country is a world-wide trend. Postal services everywhere are struggling. What has happened is that technological developments afford so many other facilities and so many other opportunities that the letter has become a clumsy means of communication. In this modern age in which we are living, people have also become too lazy to write. These days they prefer to use a shorter and less exacting method of communication.

In my opinion I said enough during the Second Reading debate to illustrate clearly to the hon. member that we do not intend to allow postal services to be destroyed by modern technology. I am saying this because we believe that in a large and sprawling country the postal service still has a part to play. Furthermore, we believe that the letter is the best method for a certain type of communication and will therefore always remain in demand. That is why we are trying to find the golden mean by on the one hand not allowing postal services to develop into a Cinderella, dependent solely on handouts without generating any income, while on the other hand we are attempting to keep its cost structure at such a level that it continues to remain competitive with telecommunication and other related services, seen from an economic point of view as well.

The hon. member also referred to the problems we experienced in regard to bonus bond placards. In my opinion this matter was wrested out of its context entirely by the Press, and particularly by one specific newspaper. Perhaps I could illustrate this best by quoting briefly from a statement which I had to issue in order to clear up the confusion. The statement appeared in Beeld of 11 January, and I am quoting a passage from it—

That is I—

Out of the blue, this matter was given prominence in the Press. We do not know why it has suddenly become a topical matter, particularly after the matter had already been disposed of in June. As I said in this statement, I reiterate this evening that the hon. the Minister of Finance displayed a comprehending attitude towards our not wanting to display these placards. The principal reason was that we had received the complaints and that, in the light of these complaints we foresaw that further complaints would follow. If the hon. member wants to know from me why this advertisement was in fact able to appear in the Press, I can only tell him that I do not think it is my task to reply to that question. The matter does not rest with me. All I can tell the hon. member is that as far as the Post Office premises are concerned, I have not yet received another request to display these placards again.

There has been another outcry about what I want to call the “Anneline Kriel” placard. This is another case of the newspapers dragging us into the issue and saying that we did not wish to display the placard. It was about one being able to win X rands for a hanrinse, or something like that. The fact of the matter is that we received no request to display such a placard. We received letters of apology from the advertising agency concerned, because they never told anyone that there had been any problem with the Post Office. They had not intended that placard to be displayed in post offices, but nevertheless the statement appeared in the newspapers that the Post Office had refused, or words to that effect, to display the placard. There is a screw loose somewhere, and we do not have it.

Mr. Chairman, could the hon. Minister tell us whether his department acted of its own accord or whether it acted as a result of complaints which it received?

If the hon. member were to read statements made at the time by the Acting Postmaster-General, he would see that objections were in fact made when these placards were distributed. These were investigated and people at head office were of the opinion that further complaints could be expected and that there were problems involved in displaying this specific placard. The objections were not to all placards, but only to a few.

The hon. member for Yeoville criticized me because I had not complied with a request of his to expand the facilities at the post office in Yeoville. The hon. member referred rather cynically to my letter, implying that I was a person who sat in an ivory tower and summarily passed judgment on requests addressed to me. I want to give him the assurance that when his letter was received I had a proper investigation carried out by a very senior official, a person who has experience and who knows what comparable conditions at other post offices at peak hours and non-peak hours are. This official conveyed to me his finding that there was no unusual situation prevailing at the Yeoville post office.

†Mr. Chairman, I think I should also add that I did mention in my letter to the hon. member that there was a short period during which the counters were not fully manned and that that might have caused an abnormal situation, but such a situation would have been of a temporary nature. Under normal circumstances when all five posts, and in certain circumstances all seven posts, are manned, this situation will not occur. I thank him for his invitation to come to Yeoville. I give him the assurance that when I drive through Johannesburg again—which I do almost 50 times per year—I will definitely make a detour and have a look at the Yeoville post office for myself.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member also referred to our rates of interest. He will realize that we do not want to enter into unnecessary competition with the private sector. We closely co-ordinate the fixing of our interest rates with the Treasury, and I can give him the assurance that we try to be as fair as possible to private enterprises on the one hand whilst also looking after our own interests on the other hand. I do not think we can assume the responsibility to pay a special rate of interest, higher than the average rate of interest, because of our availability to the public. I think that would give us an unfair advantage over the private sector, a matter I am sure that hon. member would be the first to criticize in this House.

Mr. Chairman, may I ask the hon. the Minister whether he has, on his visits overseas, seen the Post Office saving scheme for the aged, particularly the scheme in Great Britain?

I have not taken note of any special services of that kind, but I certainly can look into the matter. I think, however, that the type of service one should render the aged—and I shall be coming back to this point—should rather concentrate on making the facilities of the Post Office accessible to them rather than on offering special rates of interest. I shall, however, look into what is being done overseas. I am indeed interested, and if the hon. member would let me have some details I would very much appreciate it.

I have already commented on his remarks about stamps. I certainly think he should make use of the services of another member of his party in this regard.

I now come to the hon. member for Constantia’s request about Bergvliet. In that connection let me refer him to the details on page 5 of the Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure. If he looks at programme No. 25, he will see that there is a certain amount of expenditure planned for Bergvliet. So we are definitely giving attention to the problems he has raised.

1981! Could you speed it up?

This year alone R30 000 will be spent. It is a fact of life that everyone wants everything to be speeded up. I can give him the assurance that we have very definite formulas which we use in deciding upon priorities, and one does not easily disrupt such procedures. If the hon. member feels that our approach is wrong, he is welcome to say so. I have listened to what he has had to say thus far, and if he would let me have further details, I could look into the matter further. However, I do not want to raise any false hopes.

Mr. Chairman, according to the criteria of the Post Office itself, the situation in Bergvliet is critical, and if a critical situation must be allowed to continue for two years …

Order!

Could the hon. the Minister please review the priorities in question?

I cannot take the matter any further than what I have already said. The wheels have been set in motion, and I can give the hon. member the assurance that we shall look into the matter and try our best. As the hon. member can see from the Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure, there are some 71 programmes, and if every hon. member in the House stood up and made out a case for his own specific priorities, we could sit here until the end of December deciding whose requirements are, in fact, priorities and whose are not. Everybody can make out a case for priorities, but it is only after very thorough investigation that we spend money where we think it is necessary. I therefore do not think that I can give the hon. member any undertaking or guarantee that the matter can be speeded up. Yet I certainly will look at the matter.

*The hon. member for Verwoerdburg expressed his appreciation for the improvements in the postal services. He demonstrated that his appreciation is based on facts and not on mere loyalty. Consequently I thank him for what I thought was a very positive contribution.

The hon. member for Overvaal, as well as various other hon. members, including the hon. member for Houghton and the hon. member for Wonderboom, referred to mobile post offices and asked us to make more use of them, particularly with homes for the aged in mind. On the face of it this sounds like a very positive suggestion, and we ourselves are pleased with certain results we have already achieved with mobile post offices. I think that the suggestions in question warrant a thorough investigation. I therefore give the undertaking that we shall go into this. But I want to tell them that we also have problems. If we have to consider using these mobile units for paying out pensions, the question of security has to be considered because large amounts of money will then have to be conveyed. This could cause problems. The administrative implications of looking after the money properly give rise to certain other financial implications. We shall therefore have to look at the security aspect and the economic side of the matter and try to solve any problems which may arise. Another problem which I foresee is that an excessive use of mobile post offices, including the payment of pensions, will require a relatively large capital investment for a service which one will only be able to use for a limited period each month and will not be able to use for the rest of the month. It might be uneconomic, and for that reason one will have to investigate how one can utilize mobile units continuously so that one’s capital investment may at all times be utilized productively. But despite these problems I think it is a suggestion which warrants support, and we shall therefore look into it.

I should like to thank the hon. members for Rosettenville and Boksburg very sincerely for their positive contributions. The hon. member for Rosettenville emphasized a very important factor in the growth in the demand for telephone services. There was considerable reference to that question during the Second Reading debate, inter alia, by the hon. member for Kempton Park, who expressed his concern in this connection. I predicted that the demand for telephone services would increase, and the hon. member then asked whether the possibility might not exist that we would fall behind again and whether a situation would not again arise on the Witwatersrand and whether another Operation Commando would not have to be launched and we would again experience the trials and tribulations of that time. I want to tell him that one should not necessarily consider a growth in demand as something to be afraid of. Basically a growth in demand is a positive factor. It proves that there is growth; it proves that the conditions are dynamic; it proves that there is progress. I just want to give the hon. member the assurance that we are absolutely determined to plan in advance and not again find ourselves in the situation of having fallen so far behind. Hence the tariff increases. We are engaged in a programme of capital investment to lay the foundations for accommodating the future demand.

The hon. member for Boksburg commented positively on our suppliers. I want to tell him that we also have great appreciation for what they are doing for us. Our relations with them are sound. They are an important component of our telecommunications services, and we hope that our relations with them will continue to remain cordial. I just want to ask them to co-operate in regard to the rationalization process to which I referred in the Second Reading. As far as the problem in his constituency is concerned, I want to tell him that we are taking note of it and will look at the matter again in his Hansard. We shall then let him know what we intend doing.

Finally, I want to refer to a matter which was not raised in a speech, but which was brought up for discussion during the Committee Stage in a unique way. I was requested in writing to go into this matter briefly.

The hon. member for Bezuidenhout brought it to my attention that many problems are being experienced with the packaging of books which arrive at their destination in a tattered condition, to put it briefly. We are unhappy about this ourselves. However, the hon. member should spend a day with us in a post office. There is just no way in which something that has not been correctly packaged can be protected. One can handle such a mail item with kid gloves and place it gently in the mailbag, but the fact remains that it has to go into the mailbag and that there are many other items which also have to be placed in the mailbag. That mailbag is handled by quite a number of people during a long process and is placed in a vehicle together with other mailbags. In the long run good packaging is the only solution. By way of an experiment we offered a special, strong cardboard holder for sale at some of our major post offices. I want to encourage the hon. member and the people who complained to him to look into the matter a little and to try out these special cardboard containers. I think they might be the solution. But the ultimate solution still lies in good packaging.

I want to thank hon. members who participated in the debate once again. We can discuss the matters which are still outstanding further in the Third Reading.

Mr. Chairman, may I ask the hon. the Minister—I have already referred to this matter, but it may have escaped his attention—whether he will consider the possibility of his department, in conjunction with the local authorities and the provincial authorities, providing table telephones at various places where people will have access to them?

Mr. Chairman, we have found that system of table telephones to be relatively successful. However, the hon. member must remember that at many of the places to which he referred in his Second Reading speech and where he wants these table telephones to be situated, there are public telephones in any case which are providing a good service and which are not exposed to vandalism. He referred to hospitals for example. But in most hospitals there are ordinary public telephones which work well and there we normally experience no problems with vandalism. However, we are increasingly making use of this table telephone system. Consequently I think it is a positive suggestion that we should consider expanding that system further. However, he must just remember that such a telephone is also exposed to vandalism. The only reason why it works is that we are able to place these telephones indoors, in cafes or shops, or on counters where an eye can be kept on them. But a table telephone is not stronger or better protected against vandalism than any other telephone. The advantage is that one places it where someone can keep an eye on it to ensure that vandalism does not occur. However, we shall consider the idea of closer co-operation with local authorities.

Clause agreed to.

House Resumed.

Bill reported without amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I move—

Agreed to.