Government to build new building of the State Archives

The Macedonian government has tasked the director of the State Archive to draft an action plan on the construction of a new building for the purpose of long-term preservation of archival records, Minister Zorica Apostolska told reporters on Wednesday elaborating the government’s decision to build a new building for the State Archive of Macedonia.

The minister without portfolio said the decision, adopted yesterday by the government, was based on wide-ranging consultations and factual analyses.

The most suitable solution, Apostolska noted, is to build a new building that meets all the necessary standards for an archive.

Government spokesman Mile Bosnjakovski told the news conference that archive records were being preserved and that not a single document had suffered damage.

Under a decision of the former administration in 2012, the State Archive was ordered to move from the ‘intellectual core’ in downtown Skopje into the building of the Archaeological Museum on the quay of river Vardar.

The new premises, on the sixth and seventh floor, do not meet any of the international archival standards, employees of the State Archive have claimed.

Since 2014, the year when the State Archive settled in the new building, the institution has been working in substandard conditions, unsuitable neither for the staff nor for the archival documents.

Build in 1969, the former premises of the archive had won numerous architectural awards as an institution applying top archival standards.

Asked about how much the construction of a new archive would cost, Minister Apostolska said the government was aware that it would cost more than moving the archive back into the original building. “However, having in mind the significance of all institutions, especially that of the archive records, the most appropriate decision is to build a new building,” she reiterated.