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Manila Mayor Jose Atienza, Jr. is planning to transform the City Hall clock tower into a tourist attraction, Reynaldo Gatchalian, the city hall’s building superintendent and maintenance officer, said. Continue below.

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Gatchalian said an executive lounge will be built near the clock tower as an observatory station where department heads of the Manila city government would hold their weekly meeting.

An elevator will also be put up to transport sightseers to the clock, which is located at the 11th floor of the City Hall tower.

Atienza earlier ordered the repair of the clock tower’s mechanism to give an accurate and synchronized time.

Aside from the replacement of the clock’s mechanism, its architectural design has also been redone to enhance its historical value.

Two clock keepers are tasked to check the mechanism of the clock daily to ensure that it is in good working condition all the time.

Prior to the clock’s restoration, foreign engineers from Italy and Switzerland were tasked by the previous administration to repair the neglected clock, Gatchalian said.

Gatchalian said there were many clock repair crews who attempted to revive the clock. Despite its repair, electromechanical disorders kept stalling the clock’s mechanism. It was finally repaired when P100,000 worth of local spare parts were installed.

Upon Atienza’s order, Gatchalian led the repair of the clock tower’s mechanism and the installation of a sound system, complete with a CD (compact disc) player and high-fidelity speakers that would chime every 15 minutes as well as every hour.

Gatchalian said Atienza insisted on synchronizing the time shown on the four clocks outside the City Hall building, especially the clock tower, for one main reason - to see where the city and the people are heading.

“If you can’t run the clocks, how can you run a city effectively. We need to see the rime to know where we are heading,” Gatchalian said in the vernacular. He said that just like Atienza, he believes that synchronizing the clock’s time is both a symbol and a necessity.

The clock has become one of the most recognizable landmarks in the city.

June 12, 2005

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