Province reveals losses of public money for first quarter

Incidents ranging from the misappropriation of gas to the presumed theft of two-way radios cost the Government of Saskatchewan more than $66,000 in public money in the first quarter of 2019.

The province released the details of the losses in a series of media releases Wednesday. The losses were reported from April 1 to June 30.

The largest chunk — $30,431 — was reported by SaskEnergy.

The Crown corporation said that between January 2004 and April of this year, an employee was misappropriating gasoline for their personal use during the operation of corporate fleet vehicles.

The employee was fired on May 30 and the police were called.

The government said that it’s trying to recover the money from the individual and steps are being taken to make sure a similar incident can’t occur in the future.

The Saskatchewan Health Authority reported a loss of $15,189 from an incident that occurred in June of last year. In that case, three two-way EMS radios went missing and were presumed stolen.

The incident was reported to the RCMP and the authority took steps to better monitor its assets.

The Saskatchewan Apprenticeship and Trade Certification Commission (SATCC) reported a loss of $11,889 from March of 2018.

According to the government, “an employee took registration applications and fees from clients and did not submit them to SATCC and allegedly stole and sold code books to clients.”

The employee resigned and the police were contacted. To date, the government has recovered $1,485 from the individual.

In March of this year, the Ministry of Highways and Infrastructure determined that a ministry purchase card held by an employee had been used for non-government purchases totalling $4,998.

The employee was fired and the incident was reported to the police. Recovery efforts have recouped $2,941 to date.

The fifth and final loss of public money occurred from the Saskatchewan Cancer Agency from June 2016 to January 2018.

According to the province, “a fraudulent vendor, providing advertising services, was paid based on five invoices.” The total loss was $3,737.

After an internal investigation, the agency reported the fraud to the Regina Police Service. The agency plans to re-examine its practices for verifying vendors.

“The SCA will not pursue any action to recover the funds due to the type of fraud, the small amount lost and assumed location of the fraudulent vendor,” the government said in a media release.