OYAL EXCHANGE POST OFFICE

To The Editor Of The Statesman

SIR, – You will doubtless agree with me that the object of opening a branch Post Office in the building of the Royal Exchange was to facilitate the business of surrounding business houses. To what extent this object is being achieved may be realised from a case which happened today. Probably others like myself have met with the same annoyance and delay at the travesty in the application of clause 7 of the Insurance Registered Parcel Department Memo wherein is stated that “All seals on an insured article must bear distinct impressions of some device other than that of a current coin, etc.” I had occasion to send out an insured registered cover and had put on it five seals which identically bore the same impression of a certain word on the face of them. The Postmaster returned the cover declaring that it was improperly sealed. It would be interesting to learn how many more business houses have had trouble in a like manner so that the Chamber may consider whether the Post Office on the premises is a blessing or a nuisance.

SUFFERER.

Calcutta.

THE HOWRAH MUNICIPALITY

To The Editor Of The Statesman

SIR, – Allow me to say something on the new system of Ward Committees, on behalf of the rate-payers. The correspondent, who described this system in your columns was ill-informed at least as to the actual working of it. As a member of the long-suffering public I welcome this system as an attempt to simplify and make practical the complicated and unwieldy machinery which looks to the sanitation of Municipal Howrah. It took the older system at least a week to dispose of a dead rat lying on the public road, but it takes the new system not more than twelve hours to do the same work now. A part of the work of the Chairman of the Ward Committee is to attend to complaints and never before in the history of the municipality not even when it was under the control of an overworked District Officer – have complaints been so speedily examined. The rate-payers have everything to gain when Commissioners compete with one another to render the greatest service to their constituencies.

BEJOY KRISHNA BHATTACHARYA.

RENTS IN CALCUTTA

To The Editor Of The Statesman

SIR, – I shall feel obliged if you would spare me a little space in your columns for mine and I am sure that of others who are in the same position as myself. Is there to be no limit in rents going up in Calcutta? Hitherto I have been paying Rs 160 per mensem for a flat, and from next month the landlord intends clapping on an extra Rs 25 per mensem. Surely, Sir, there is no necessity for such a jump for a single flat specially during war time when everything is so expensive and one’s salary remains stationary. To live in an uncongested locality in Calcutta it is essential to take a place on a high rent and sublet rooms, and if more rent is to be paid where is one to live as there is always the risk of the whole rent falling on one’s shoulders?

MAC.