A North East School Division school paid $37,025 given as a deposit to a playground equipment supplier that never came back with the goods.
“It was a kind of a middleman between a manufacturer and a school that was working on the order,” said Don Rempel, the division’s director of education. “Some deposit was placed that the manufacturer honoured, but the rest of the money went missing.”
As a result, the school had $9,320 returned, making the total loss $27,705. Rempel did not comment on which school was affected.
The matter has also been reported to the RCMP.
Rempel said they’ve taken action to ensure something like this won’t happen again.
“We’ve worked with other school divisions to identify this businessperson as a risk and we’ve worked with our lawyer,” he said.
Any future order placed by a school, which would be responsible for dealing with the money raised by the school community council for such a venture, that exceeds a certain threshold will now also have to be reviewed by the division’s central office.
The theft was reported in a loss report provided by the provincial government to the media. Now that the handling of school division finances is handled by the province, they will be issuing the loss report, as it does for every other government body and crown corporation, four times a year.
The report also told of $1,480 lost due to an employee that used a division fuel card for personal fuel purchases. Consequences will be discussed with the employee when they return to work from a leave.
Rempel said the new government-issued loss reports will benefit the division in the future.
“It’s good to keep an eye on what’s happening in other parts of the province as well so we can put proper controls and safeguards in place.”
