PHUKET: A three-day ceremony to commemorate the installation of a ‘City Pillar’ (‘Lak Mueang’) at the grounds of the new Phuket Provincial Hall will be held on Aug 5-7, officials have confirmed.
Phuket Governor Narong Woonciew confirmed the ceremony ‒ and the new monument ‒ at a meeting at Phuket Provincial Hall yesterday (July 12), joined by Phuket Vice Governor Amnuay Pinsuwan and Chantana Sitthiphan, head of the Phuket office of the Ministry of Culture.
The City Pillar is being constructed by the engineers from the Fine Arts Department, who joined the meeting by online conference call yesterday.
An official report of the meeting reported the cost of building the new City Pillar in numerals as B849,900, but in writing as “eight hundred and ninety-four thousand and nine hundred baht”.
A replica of the wooden panel that covers the original ‘City Pillar’ will also be installed at the site of the new City Pillar at Phuket Provincial Hall, at a cost of B428,810 funded by the Sustainable Development Foundation, Governor Narong confirmed.
The Phuket Provincial Cultural Office has contacted the Royal Brahmin Office and the Office of the Royal Household. Phra Suriya Songklod and Phra Sayom Phu Yant will consecrate the soil around the site of where the new pillar is to be built pillar during a ceremony from Aug 5-7, Governor Narong noted.
All relevant government agencies and departments were instructed to make preparations for the occasion.
The ‘Lak Mueang’ is a ‘city pillar shrine’, a traditional structure used by cities and towns throughout Thailand to serve as the symbolic “centre of the soul” of the community.
Phuket already has five ‘Lak Mueang’ erected across the island. The new monument at Phuket Provincial Hall will be the sixth such ‘Lak Mueang’ built in Phuket.
The one already long standing at Baan Muang Mai in Tambon Thepkrasattri, Thalang, currently serves as the provincial ‘Lak Mueang’ for the island.
However, Phuket officials decided to build a second, grander, ‘Lak Mueang’ also in Baan Muang Mai under a project that began in 2010.
In explaining the construction of the second ‘Lak Mueang’ at Baan Muang Mai, Fine Arts Department architect Naruporn Saowanit, explained that all provincial ‘Lak Mueang’ in the country must be similar to the main ‘Lak Mueang’ in Bangkok, the design of which follows design principles set out by King Mongkut, Rama 4.
“‘Lak Mueang’ in every province must have arches on all four sides and must be located on higher ground than the nearby roads and houses,” he said.
