A number of employees were relieved of their duties with immediate effect yesterday at the One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) head offices in Queenstown, George-town.
Stabroek News understands that the employees including upper management all received their letters of dismissal before the close of the day and were told to leave the compound.
This newspaper was told that the office was closed by 15:00hrs yesterday, over an hour and a half earlier than usual because there simply wasn’t anyone left.
According to a source, none of the employees was given any warning or had any inclination that they would be fired in such a brusque manner.
The source said that they would be unable to confirm that it was a total of 40 staff members that were dismissed.
The People’s Progressive Party yesterday on its Facebook page condemned what it said was the dismissal of 40 employees of the OLPF office.
The PPP stated that the dismissed employees were told that their services were no longer required as the project had come to an end.
The opposition said that they were made aware that 14 employees have been retained, of which four will be seconded to the E-governance project.
The large-scale dismissal comes two weeks after a visit by the Minister of State, Joseph Harmon during which he stated that the project’s office revealed an inventory of “unserviceable and defective” computers.
Harmon at the time said the project under its current framework was under revision.
According to a press release from the Ministry of the Presidency, on Wednesday, July 8th, a team headed by Harmon visited the project’s Forshaw Street, Queenstown office as part of the ongoing process of understanding what is happening with the project—which was initiated under the Bharrat Jagdeo-led PPP/C government in 2011—and E-Governance.
Harmon said the government will at this time review the project, and the linkage between what is done with the computers and what is done with the entire E-Governance project.
He said that “the sourcing was done by persons who are independent of the management of the OLPF” and “the team at the OLPF is basically managing and administering equipment that were given to them, some of which he says was basically useless.”
Stabroek News was unable to make contact with the minister or the head of the OLPF, Margo Boyce. This newspaper understands that Boyce has not been relieved of her duties.
Under the project, the government planned to distribute 90,000 computers to poor families over a three-year period, however the US$30M initiative launched under the PPP administration in January 2011 had only distributed 27,000 units by the end of 2012.
