Refurbishment of the 83-year-old Presidential Building, center of the country's leadership and a historic national site, will be completed tomorrow, four months ahead of schedule.
The large-scale refurbishment of the interior of the building is the first of its kind since it was completed in March 1919.
Construction of the Presidential Building, which used to be the office of the Taiwan governor-general during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, began on June 1, 1912.
The building was severely damaged at the end of World War II. Repairs were completed a year after Taiwan was liberated in 1945.
Although impressive from the outside, the building's facilities have since fallen into decay.
Before President Chen Shui-bian (
At that time, most offices in the building were crowded, with some employees having to work at desks in the corridors.
Many walls between offices were made of wood.
Toilets were one of the facilities most often complained about in the building.
According to the staff who had to use them, one could smell the toilets even before entering them.
There was also a shortage of ladies' toilets because the majority of people who had worked there in the past were men. The drainage system in the building also leaked often.
In some parts of the building, electric cables and pipes in the ceilings were exposed and a ceiling once collapsed under the extra weight of pipes and wires that had been installed above it over the years.
The refurbishment project, which began on April 1, has been slow and demanding because of the building's age. During the refurbishment, all the old cables and pipes were replaced.
Ceilings and walls were strength-ened and there are no longer desks in the corridors.
The building now has new central air conditioning, lighting, drainage, fire alarms, computer networks and five-star toilets.
"When the president was in, or some important figures visited, we would ask workers near the president's office to lower the volume of their work," said James Huang (黃志芳), spokesman of the Presidential Office.
Two months ago, Chen pressed for the work to be completed ahead of schedule.
"The president is a very effective person. The refurbishment project was originally due to finish in April next year, but the president demanded that it be completed by the end of this year," Huang said.
"The president made the request because he saw that the refurbishment work was causing a lot of inconvenience to employees in the building," Huang said.
According to Huang, the building's corridors were sometimes very dusty during the work.
"Some guards even needed to wear masks," he said.
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