The education minister was referring to the case of the headmaster who was robbed of RM109,000 that was meant to be financial aid for his students in Semenyih yesterday, Kosmo reported.

“The ministry has strict standard operating procedures (SOPs) for withdrawals, which were violated. The teacher must be escorted by police or other teachers if the withdrawal is more than RM10,000. This is an even larger amount,” Fadhlina was quoted as saying.

“This case involves a large sum of money that was entrusted (to the headmaster) to help the students receive cash aid that was rightfully theirs, and we will not compromise if the headmaster is found to be negligent. There can be no more such incidents like these in the future.”

Fadhlina also gave her assurance that the students would get the aid as promised.

Stressing that the incident is being “thoroughly investigated”, Fadhlina said the ministry is currently awaiting a report from the police and the Selangor education department before taking any action.

Last night, Kajang police chief Zaid Hassan said the victim withdrew the money from a bank in Kampung Baru Semenyih at about 10am yesterday and placed the cash inside a bag, which was kept on the front passenger’s seat of his car.

When the victim returned to his car after buying a drink, the windscreen on the rear passenger side was broken and the bag containing the cash was missing.

Earlier today, Zaid said he was disappointed that the headmaster did not request a security escort, adding that the police have long provided security escort services to more than 100 schools around Kajang whenever they needed to withdraw cash from the bank.

However, the headmaster, who is from a primary school in Semenyih, told the police that he had never requested for any police escort in his 10 years of service at the school.

Zaid advised schools to always get the police to escort them when withdrawing large sums of money. He added that the police are not ruling out negligence and the involvement of “insiders” in the case.