Official Opening of World Heritage Office by Mr Lim Guan Eng Penang Chief Minister.

Today is an auspicious day for Penang heritage enclave when the former Penang Heritage Center is now officially declared as World Heritage Office. Despite pouring rain, the ceremony ran smoothly as scheduled.

As one of the guests, I was happy to see quite a few familiar faces there. Mr. Lim Guan Eng, our Chief Minister started the ceremony by giving a speech. In his speech, he touched on the fact that despite the status of George Town as a UNESCO historic city, Penang is number four from bottom out of all the states in Malaysia in terms of funding received for approved restoration plans.

This is a pretty sad thing, we are hoping that the federal government will see the undying spirit of the people of Penang in preserving our heritage and thus increase the funding in due course.

After the ribbon cutting ceremony, we witnessed the CM signing the plague officiating the opening.

The center was nicely decorated with a lot of new exhibits on display, including classic tiles used for roofing and also flooring for the shop houses. Those surely attracted my attention very much. We were also told that RM20K was allocated to buy books and other journals to add to the archive at the center.

There were also slide shows and some videos published especially to promote this World Heritage City Program. Other places under this program are Borobudur in Bali and Lijang in China. Hopefully one day Penang will stand as tall as these famous places too.

See the full page about World Heritage Office in Penang