Heavy rain floods State Archive of Macedonia, risks devastation of invaluable documents

Heavy rains over the weekend have flooded offices of the State Archive of the Republic of Macedonia in downtown Skopje.

The offices are located on the sixth and seventh floor of the same building that also houses the Archaeological Museum and the Constitutional Court.

Several members of the staff for two days are doing everything they can to move archive documents to another location in order to save them from being destroyed.

“This is not the first time, it always happens when it rains. This cannot go on any further,” an employee tells MIA during the ‘rescue mission.’

Under a decision of the former administration in February 2012, the State Archive was ordered to move from the ‘intellectual core’  in downtown Skopje to 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, claim employees of the State Archive.

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.

On Monday, Minister of Culture Robert Alagjozovski said the problem with the ‘inadequate’ premises of the State Archive of Macedonia would be solved as soon as possible.