“I want to know how this stuff got through our borders, how it ended up on the shelves of major retailers like Kmart and Target and then ended up in schools, preschools and thousands of households,” Education Minister Blair Boyer said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
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Blair Boyer said any inquiry should examine what checks occur with products like coloured play sand. (ABC News: Lincoln Rothall)<\/p>\n
Mr Boyer said he had written to the federal government asking for an inquiry and hoped other jurisdictions would join him in the request.<\/p>\n
“What are the checks that occur with products like this?” Mr Boyer said.<\/p>\n
“Especially now that we know in cases of a product that was made and marketed towards kids, what checks occur with a product like that?”<\/p>\n
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Mr Boyer said the inquiry could lead to ensuring an incident like this would not happen again.<\/p>\n
“Aside from all the concern that it’s caused families, there is a real cost here, that we are wearing to do the clean-up,” Mr Boyer said.<\/p>\n
“That’s money that we won’t be able to spend on other things in the education system.”<\/p>\n
In Mr Boyer’s letter to the federal government, he said the recalled product had “forced school, preschool and early learning centre closures, along with costly specialised cleaning”.<\/p>\n
“In South Australia, licensed removal and cleaning at a single school has been costed at $11,000,” he wrote.<\/p>\n
“This will be replicated across thousands of sites nationally. That is funding diverted away from teaching and learning due to a failure in product and import regulation.”<\/p>\n
Mr Boyer said the department was increasing the number of contractors in the next couple of days who could conduct deep cleans at education sites.<\/p>\n
“It means we can speed through that process,” he said.<\/p>\n
Three Catholic SA schools closed<\/p>\n
On Monday, Catholic Education in South Australia said it had temporarily closed Our Lady Vang Special School at Flinders Park and St Patrick’s Special School at Dulwich to allow for deep cleaning<\/a> \u2014 those schools remain closed.<\/p>\n In a statement, Catholic Education confirmed St Columba College Primary School is closed on Wednesday to allow a precautionary clean of all classrooms and will reopen on Thursday.<\/p>\n Last week, the ACCC issued a national recall notice for various coloured sand products after tests detected traces of asbestos.<\/p>\n