Roof workers find historic documents

PHUKET TOWN: Workers fixing the roof of the Phuket Provincial Office made an extraordinary find last week in a corner of the building’s attic: four stacks of documents dating back as far as 80 years ago. Astonishingly, the find came just a few days after another group of roofing workers found similar documents under the roof of the Phuket Provincial Mineral Resources Office. Initial research indicates that these papers, too, date back between 50 and 80 years. “The documents are in poor shape,” said Chamroen Tankasem, chief of the Directing Division of the Provincial Office, which handles planning and administration. “Some of them have been affected by sunlight, and others are falling apart. Even opening them [without damaging them] is very difficult.” According to K. Chamroen, the documents, which include correspondence between the governor’s office and Bangkok, as well as interdepartmental memos, may throw light on forgotten aspects of Phuket’s history. All the documents have been sent to the National Archives in Trang province for preservation and analysis. “We are currently categorizing them,” Suntree Sungayudth, chief of the Archives told the Gazette. “We have to clean them, treat them with pesticide, and finally put them in order. Since there are so many of them, this process could take months.”