Bungling council workers have become a laughing stock after they decided to ‘repair’ a valuable 19th century statue at the top of n iconic town hall building using sticky tape as these pictures show.
The statue which is one of the landmarks in the Ukrainian city of Odessa is located on top of the City Hall and is one of the most photographed places in the region.
But the iconic “Night and Day” statue which was designed and completed between 1829 and 1837 in a joint project by Franz Boffo and George Toricelli was damaged when it was hit by a drone which was filming the area and got too close.
In order to repair it council workers were called in, but rather than fixing the pieces back or removing the head so that a copy could be made, they simply taped up the cracked figure and left it.
The bungling repair work on the statue which is located on the roof of the building prompted jokes that the figure was of the goddess of justice, Themis, who had been blindfolded by Ukrainian officials.
However official literature provided by the council confirms that the two female figures titled “Night and Day” which are mounted alongside a huge clock are meant to represent the ‘eternity and the transience of time’.
The large clock was modernised in 1959 in order to introduce a new feature in which every hour it plays the tune “Odessa Is My Hometown”.
A spokesman for the city council defended the move which attracted widespread criticism for the bungling quality of the repair work by saying it was only intended to stop masonry falling on deputies as they came and left the building.
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Story By: Elena Kalioglo, Sub-Editor: Alex Cope, Agency: Central European News
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