Darrell Greer
Northern News Services

Rankin Inlet (Oct 09/02) - A program that poured more than $750,000 into the Rankin Inlet economy during the past year has been forced to close its doors.

The Pulaarvik Kablu Friendship Centre had been operating a work centre for the past 30 months, jointly funded by Kivalliq Partners in Development and the Department of Education.

The centre provided a variety of services, including temporary job placement.

Executive director Greg Sim says the centre was receiving $40,000 in annual funding from both Education and Kivalliq Partners.

He says when Education pulled its funding, Kivalliq Partners couldn't fund the program on its own.

"We were told we were duplicating services because we did resume writing, interview preparation and job postings," says Sim.

"But, we were more than a resume-writing service. We provided a temp service for local employers when they needed a worker for a few hours or a few weeks."

The centre has about 500 resumes on file and a data base with almost 300 names.

When criteria is entered a list is provided of every name matching the query.

Sim says the work centre was receiving between two and 10 employee requests per day.

He says the centre paid out about $750,000 in temporary employee salaries during the past year, not including employers who paid temporary workers from their own payrolls.

"The people this is hurting the most are those with limited skills, if any at all. For those people, even to go into an office setting for a few days and answer phones or do filing -- that's learning skills they need to be employable."

Department of Education director Irene Tanuyak says the centre was providing many of the same services as three full time career development officers (CDO) based in Rankin. She says her department provides funding for the entire region and, currently, only Rankin and Baker Lake have CDOs on site.

"It's better for us to provide funding for one of those communities to have the same services," says Tanuyak.

"Education does not provide a temp service, but Tanuyak quickly points out that there is a Human Resources office in Rankin.

"There were four other proposals submitted by the centre that were approved.

"This was the only one denied and we provided funding to that program for the past two years."