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