A senior director with the ministry, Samlan Luang Athai, said the donkey work on putting the nomination together had already been done. He continued by saying the main challenges left now related to infrastructure improvements and clearing unexploded ordnance remaining from the Vietnam War.
The director explained that roads, accommodation and other facilities in the environs of the Plain of Jars needed significant upgrades. He noted that a shortage of funds had delayed this process.
There are countless unexploded landmines and cluster bombs in Xieng Khuang Province. Search and destroy operations are ongoing to rid the area of these lethal devices. Historians claim the US dropped more than 250 million cluster bombs in Laos and a fair percentage of these still litter the country’s eastern landscapes.
The Plain of Jars has thousands of megalithic stone jars estimated to be up to 3,000 years old. UNESCO has been collaborating with the Lao government since 1998 on preserving the site for posterity and also on removing the unexploded bombs.
Laos to speed up Plain of Jars UNESCO application
News in Asia
Laos has released news of a plan to speed up the process of applying for UNESCO World Heritage status for the Plain of Jars. The nation’s Culture Ministry stated that it should be ready to make the final application over the next 12 months or so, but it would take UNESCO another two years to evaluate the merits of it.