The Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties (MPU) will be closed on Fri­day to deal with a ro­dent in­fes­ta­tion at its head of­fice at One Alexan­der Street, St Clair, Port-of-Spain.

In a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the min­istry said the is­sue was first iden­ti­fied in Jan­u­ary and since then its Health and Safe­ty De­part­ment has en­gaged the ser­vices of the Ro­dent Con­trol Unit of the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion on at least two oc­ca­sions, with the unit dis­trib­ut­ing pack­ets of ro­den­ti­cides through­out the build­ing.

Ear­li­er this week, work­ers at the min­istry con­tact­ed Guardian Me­dia to high­light the rat in­fes­ta­tion. The work­ers, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, said they first learned about the rats when they re­turned to work from the Christ­mas/New Year hol­i­day. They claimed their com­plaints about their health and safe­ty had been ig­nored by the Per­ma­nent and Deputy Sec­re­tary.

The work­ers on the ground floor told Guardian Me­dia that they could hear the ro­dents run­ning in the ceil­ing and found rat drop­pings around the build­ing.

“The work­ers are un­easy,” one em­ploy­ee said.

The state­ment from the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­istry said of­fi­cials there have al­so en­gaged in dis­cus­sions with sev­er­al rel­e­vant or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­clud­ing the Pub­lic Health De­part­ment of the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion, of­fi­cials from the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency (OS­HA), and the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) to ad­dress the ro­dent prob­lem.

“The MPU is part­ner­ing with one of the en­ti­ties un­der its purview, the Main­te­nance, Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny (MTS) to in­crease the lev­els of sur­veil­lance, clean­ing, and sani­tis­ing of the en­tire com­pound,” the re­lease said.

The min­istry lat­er said the head of­fice would be closed on Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 14 to fa­cil­i­tate pest abate­ment ac­tiv­i­ties.

Reg­u­lar op­er­a­tions will re­sume on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 17.