Staff of the One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) project, who were implicated in the theft of more than 100 laptops will be subjected to polygraph tests before year end, Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon yesterday revealed.
Updating the media on the investigations into the theft, which occurred over a three-month period earlier this year and resulted in six employees being sent home, Luncheon said, “we [government] told those members of staff who had been identified as implicated in the irregularities surrounding losses of laptops [that] integrity testing would be done to assist in confirming their innocence.”
He explained to reporters during a post-cabinet press briefing that these tests will be done in the form of polygraphy
“We were unable using conventional means to establish these are the perpetrators of this great evil. We are hoping, we were told, we have reason to believe that polygraphy could assist,” he said.
Luncheon had previously said that theft was in the hands of the police. According to Luncheon, the discovery of the theft was made at the warehouse located at 267 Forshaw Street, Queenstown.
The OLPF has been mired in controversy from its inception, and the timing of the distribution of the first devices ahead of last year’s elections attracted criticism that it was an electioneering project.
Under the project, the government plans to distribute 90,000 computers to poor families over a three-year period.
