What are the odds of finding extracts of an article on the establishment of Fiji’s postal office on the exact day it was established as a Government-run postal service?
This article was written on Thursday (December 2), the exact day and date the postal service was established as a government-run postal service 150 years ago.
On Thursday the post office system in Fiji was to celebrate 150 years of its existence, a milestone for an operating company in Fiji.
On Thursday December 2 1971, this newspaper covered the post office system celebrating its 100 years which was later published the following day.
It was back in December 2 1871 that the Legislative Assembly passed a Postal Act establishing a Government-run postal service, this was just over a year before G.L Griffiths, (the founder of this newspaper) began Fiji’s first organised postal service and issued the famous Fiji Times Express stamps.
Spurred into action by this private venture, the Cakobau Government established a postal monopoly by the 1871 Act and the Fiji Times Express postal service was forced to close down in January 1872, when the Government service began to function. J.M Haslett was the first chief postmaster and controlled 17 posts offices then.
According to the article published on Friday, December 3, 1971 in this newspaper, a postal notice of January 17 1872 gave the postal rates for local mails as 6¼ c a half-ounce for letters and 2c for newspapers, then roughly equivalent to three pence and a penny respectively.
From that modest beginning, the postal service in Fiji in 1971 had 170 post offices and postal agencies that served nearly all the towns and villages of the islands.
Because of Fiji’s isolated position, great importance was attached from the beginning to overseas mails.
But whereas in 1871 letters were in transit for weeks and even months, but 100 years later in 1971 a letter posted in Fiji reached almost any part of the world within a week – thanks to the daily air services which was provided then.
Although the Union Steam Ship Co. and the Colonial Sugar Refining Co., as well as the government had a hand in giving Fiji its first telephones, the government eventually took over.
It operated the telephone and telegraphs services within Fiji through the Department of Posts and Telegraphs which was later the Department of Posts and Telecommunications.
The postal service brought the department into the closest and most general contact with the public, but it was the telecommunications services that had developed most spectacularly.
In April 1902, 30 years after the post office was established, the first Pacific Ocean telegraph cable reached Fiji to provide the country’s first overseas telecommunication link.
The coming of radio and the laying of more cables including the Compac cable in 1963 ensured that Fiji’s overseas telecommunication services developed according to the latest techniques to meet the high growth rate of public demand.
- Source: THE FIJI TIMES
