Underwater training facility to be built in eastern Thailand
Bangkok (The Nation/ANN) – Thailand’s Culture Ministry has approved a 27-million-baht (US$891,000) budget to build a diving training facility for underwater archaeology in eastern Thailand’s Chanthaburi province, in order to improve human resources and underwater site inspection. It is expected to be completed in 2014.
Culture Minister Sukumol Khunploem explained that such training was previously done in the sea where, if there was a mistake, it could be fatally dangerous. As a result, the ministry asked for a facility building. The diving pool would be 12 to 20 metres-deep with an observation chamber in the bottom for a coach to observe divers during training, she said.
Thailand’s Fine Arts Department chief Somsuda Leeyawanich said the project organisers had studied China’s ShangHai underwater archaeology centre, which was the most modern of its kind in the Asia-Pacific. She said the Office of Architecture was currently designing the diving facility, which was hoped to be the Asean hub of underwater archaeology and used by UNESCO to train ASEAN countries’ underwater archaeology divers.
