The APNU/AFC administration and specifically Minister of State in the Ministry of the Presidency Joseph Harmon owe the public an explanation over what appears to have been an attempt last week to improperly walk a $572 million payment to Guyana Pharmaceutical Cor-poration (GPC) through the system based on a contract awarded to that company by the former Cabinet several weeks before the May 11 general elections.
The real shocker in this matter is that while it has been many weeks since the new government has signalled that it was targeting for particular scrutiny payments for drugs that ought to have been delivered into the health system by the GPC, a circumstance of which, one assumes, the officials of the Ministry of Health were aware, just last week the Permanent Secretary affixed his signature to a request form in connection with the payment of the aforementioned monstrous amount.
It is quite possible that last week’s directive to Permanent Secretary Leslie Cadogan to proceed immediately on several months of earned annual vacation leave merely coincided with the revelation in the Stabroek News regarding the processing of the $572 million payment. On the other hand the mind boggles as to whether the two things are not connected.
Some perplexing questions arise here and one of them may well have to do with the efficiency – or lack thereof – of the system which we are told is in place to ensure that in the matter of investigating seeming irregularities in the administration of public institutions and the government as a whole during the tenure of the previous administration, there is a structured and efficient regimen to administer the process.
Interestingly, the signatory to the communication to the Permanent Secretary directing that he proceed on leave was Mr Harmon, who, clearly, functions as the executor of the new government’s will and wishes, on every issue. Other ministers and high officials speak with varying degrees of frequency on their portfolios. Mr Harmon is in the media on an almost daily basis and he speaks on most if not all issues on which there is something to say. In effect he appears to function in a capacity that bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the former Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon, even though he is differently titled. It may well be that there was never any possibility that this multi-million-dollar transaction would have made it to the payment stage (even though the mind boggles about the considerable hiatus between the Cabinet approval some weeks before the general elections and the Permanent Secretary affixing his signature to the request form during last week.
Indeed, one is left to wonder whether the administration, at the level of Mr Harmon, might only have become wise to this matter only after it was placed in the public domain. The Ministry of the Presidency should consider speaking on this matter.
