Families in St Paul’s Bay and Qawra will have to wait for at least another year for the opening of a new State primary school, a much-needed facility that was originally planned to be up and running by last year.
Announced in 2015 by Education Minister Evarist Bartolo, the project was meant to address the rapid rise in population in the area, which has exceeded 20,000.
A tract of land close to the Qawra church was chosen for the new school by the Foundation for Tomorrow Schools, a State agency responsible for large capital projects falling under the responsibility of the Education Ministry.
Spanning an area of 7,000 square metres, the new school will accommodate up to 500 students. Apart from 39 classrooms, the project comprises an underground car park for 400 vehicles, a gymnasium, a futsal pitch and two badminton courts. But construction work immediately stalled, to the point that at this time last year, the site was still abandoned and an FTS billboard saying the school would open by the end of 2017 had been removed.
While an agency spokesman attributed the delay to complications surrounding the tendering process, Education Ministry sources said the project had been dealt a…
