Burglary at National Headquarters

Chief Executive Pat Herbert reports

Around midday on Saturday, 30 August our cleaners discovered signs of forced entry into RNZRSA's offices.

A number of major items had been stolen, the most serious of which was RNZRSA's file server. A file server is, in essence, the engine which drives the computer network, to which all workstations, within National Headquarters, are connected. It is really the centrepiece of an organisation's administration. It contained business records and transactions, and was the vehicle through which emails, faxes etc came into and left the organisation.

Other items stolen included a laptop computer, a digital camera and historical records, all of which were housed in a large and very heavy safe, which we had been assured, when it was installed, was immovable.

Not only was it not 'immovable', it was actually physically removed from the fourth floor and taken to, we know not where.

The loss of the file server and other computer equipment has created huge problems for Headquarters staff and the job of reconstructing the records is both arduous and slow.

A very sad loss was RNZRSA's 'Roll of Honour', a book which contains the names of all recipients of National Awards right back to the founding days of NZRSA during the First World War. The Honours Book contained beautifully illuminated pages with the names written in a copperplate script - it is irreplaceable.

Thanks to the good offices of our Editor and Public Relations Officer Bill Hopper, we were able to speak with the media on the Saturday to make a plea to the people responsible for the thefts, to at least return the Honours Book and computer tapes which also held historical data.

We are most grateful to Wellington's Dominion Post, TV1 and Radio New Zealand for enabling us to make a plea through the media for the return of those items, sadly without success.

We are also most grateful for the offers of assistance from individual members, from local Associations in the area, from HANZ (Hospitality Association of New Zealand) and of course, our own staff, who have put in a huge effort to get things right. We must especially thank, though, Royal and Sun Alliance for their very generous help in making staff available, at no cost to RNZRSA, as data entry operators.

It really is something to know that there are people and organisations out there always willing to lend a hand in times of need.

We will report further in the next issue of RSA Review.