Japan Helps Restore Flood-Hit Court Papers in Sri Lanka

New Delhi, June 1 (Jiji Press)–Japanese experts have been helping Sri Lanka restore a huge amount of flood-soaked court documents. Late last November, Cyclone Ditwah hit the island nation in the Indian Ocean, affecting more than 2.2 million people and leaving some 820 of them dead or missing. According to the Japanese Embassy in Colombo, more than 170,000 documents at a court in the central Sri Lanka city of Kandy, including papers on pending cases, were soaked in floodwater. In a quick response to the Sri Lankan government’s request for document restoration cooperation, Tokyo in March dispatched specialists including Yosei Kozuma, chief of the Cultural Heritage Disaster Risk Management Center in Nara, and Masakazu Furuta, professor emeritus at Osaka Metropolitan University. Kozuma has played a key part in restoring March 2011 tsunami-soaked paper cultural properties in northeastern Japan, and Furuta has been a leading researcher in radiation sterilization. In Kandy, Kozuma taught local staff how to efficiently use absorbent paper and equipment for the restoration work. As a result, the time required for the process was reduced to about one-tenth. “My experience in dealing with flood damage, which occurs frequently in Japan, helped a lot,” he said. However, the restoration team still faces about 15,000 documents that need urgent treatment. Even with the efficient method and 10 workers per day, it will take some 10 months to finish the job. Kozuma, now in Japan, plans to return there to provide further support and donate necessary materials and equipment. Meanwhile, Furuta provided knowhow to prevent molds, which may cause health hazards among restoration staff, from growing on floodwater-soaked papers. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]