St Patrick’s Newtown Girls’ RC closed over electrical issue

CARISA LEE

Re­porter

Vic­ar for Ed­u­ca­tion and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment (CEBM), Fr. David Khan, hopes that stu­dents of St. Patrick’s New­town Girls’ RC School will not have to go more than one week with­out school.

An elec­tri­cal is­sue forced the all-girls pri­ma­ry school on Mar­aval Road, Port of Spain, to close last Thurs­day (Jan­u­ary 8, 2026).

“Yes, it is true due to the ad­di­tion­al­ly elec­tri­cal ca­pac­i­ty of the school at present the bot­tom floor has to be rewired,” Fr. Khan said.

He hopes the work will be com­plet­ed this week.

Fr. Khan said the prob­lem was on­ly ob­served last Wednes­day and that ac­tion was tak­en im­me­di­ate­ly. He ex­plained that the ad­vice giv­en was to close the school to fa­cil­i­tate a com­pre­hen­sive in­spec­tion and re­pairs be­fore ask­ing stu­dents to re­turn.

“Safe­ty is al­ways the num­ber one pri­or­i­ty,” he said.

Fr. Khan added that the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion al­so was in­formed of the is­sue and the clo­sure.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the Min­istry re­gard­ing the mat­ter and is await­ing a re­sponse.

*This is a de­vel­op­ing sto­ry*