Candle light burns teachers home

 A LIT candle left inside a teacher’s house burnt down the entire building and all its contents at Mingende St Joseph Primary School in  Chimbu’s Kerowagi district.

The building worth more than K80,000 and shared by two female teachers caught fire on Tuesday night when the occupants were out.

The school’s headmaster Leo Wau claimed carelessness led to the school losing one of its duplex buildings.

The teachers lost all their belongings in the fire.

Wau said the candle was left in the room occupied by a married female teacher with two kids. 

He said that when the alarm was raised, it was too late to save the building.

“Many parents came to the school today for  parents’ day and blamed us teachers for not looking after the building and we had a big argument,” Wau said.

Wau said teachers were using candles because PNG Power disconnected the power supply to the school early this month because of  non-payment of bills totalling K3000. 

He said the outstanding bill carried forward from last year was K5000, but the school administration paid K2000.