Sindh archives dept allocates funds for retrieval of rare documents

A treasure trove of documents is available, which may decay as employees have no expertise

KARACHI: For the first time the Sindh archives department has allocated funds in its budget to obtain rare books, documents, clippings, audio and video recordings relating to the social, administrative and development history of Sindh from India, the United Kingdom and other countries.

"Around Rs40 million has been allocated in the upcoming budget of 2017-18. This money will be utilised for the research and preservation of records [in the archives department]," Sindh Archives Department Director of Research Ravi Kumar told The Express Tribune.

He said that a committee comprising experts will be formed to pursue this case and some equipment, including scanners and computers, will be purchased to facilitate the process.



According to officials of the archives department, more than 40,000 files are available with archives department and most of these rare files document Sindh's history from 1836 to 1995. However, there are no video or audio recordings available.

"A treasure trove of documents is available, which may decay because most of the employees working in the archives department have no expertise to preserve them," a senior official in the archives department said.

PHOTO: Archives Department.

"In this digital world, they [the archives department] are still using local methods to preserve these documents. No training or capacity building workshops are conducted to enhance the skills of these employees either," he said, sharing that the last time a training for the employees was conducted was in 1992 and since then, no one has bothered to initiate another one.



Another official, referring to a rare record of a ferry service from Karachi to Sukkur, said that merchant vessels used to carry passengers from Manora in Karachi to Kotri near Hyderabad and the ferries used to travel via the Indus River, transporting passengers to Sukkur. "Since Sindh was under the Bombay presidency at the time, most of the records of this ferry service are also available in India and we will to get them too," he said.

The additional charge of the archives department has been given to the Culture and Tourism Minister Syed Sardar Shah.

Talking to The Express Tribune, Shah said his top priority is to retrieve all the records from various countries and get them digitalised. "We have a rich history that should be preserved," he said, adding that rare documents pertaining to the development of Sindh are available in Mumbai and Calcutta and the provincial government will retrieve these documents.



"The British laid down Asia's biggest irrigation system in Sindh, but we don't have the proper records of how it was built, the communication that took place between government officials, project proposals or budgetary allocations among other records," he lamented, adding that a total of Rs100 million has been allocated to the archives department and offices will also be established at district levels to preserve records from the various districts.