The PPP has called into question the government’s plans for the restructuring of the One Laptop per Family (OLPF) programme while rejecting Minister of State Joseph Harmon’s reference to the programme as a “massive fraud.”
During the party’s weekly press briefing held at Freedom House, yesterday the party’s General Secretary Clement Rohee stated that the remarks by Harmon were without basis given that with the plethora of forensic audits ongoing the OLPF programme was not selected for one.
The party’s general secretary defended the programme, which was conceptualised under the PPP administration and has already handed out laptops to over 55,000 families in the four years since it was implemented.
Rohee took a jab at Harmon when he stated sarcastically, “Harmon walked into a storeroom full of laptops suddenly and determined that 10,000 were no good. Harmon is probably the best stand up auditor to determine which laptops were good and which were bad.”
The party’s general secretary said, “These unsubstantiated declarations and unilateral moves by the Granger administration are deeply suspicious and convey the impression that excuses are being made to secretly hand over laptops to friends and cronies of the APNU/AFC Coali-tion.”
He said the government needed to explain its methodology moving forward on how it planned to distribute the remaining laptops, some 10,000 valued at US$8 million that were ordered prior to the PPP demitting office. When asked by members of the media to clarify just how the PPP/C administration conducted its qualitative and quantitative study on how effective the programme was in actually bridging the telecommunications gap Rohee stated that Dr Roger Luncheon the former head of the presidential secretariat would have spoken endlessly on the matter during post-cabinet press briefings.
Rohee was evasive when asked directly about how the PPP would have measured the benefits of the programme.
In his statement to the press he said, “A transparent process was used to determine each beneficiary to whom priority was given.” He added, “This project was a critical component of the new frontier development path that will drive a new and more prosperous Guyana.”
Earlier this month, Harmon had stated that the programme was up for review after a visit to the Queenstown office where it was revealed that there was an inventory of “unserviceable and defective” computers.
Two weeks later on July 23, some 40 employees including management were given dismissal letters. 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.
At a post cabinet press conference, Minister of Governance Raphael Trotman had stated that after finding no work being done a decision was made to dismiss employees. However, Harmon is still to give a comprehensive breakdown on how he proposes the programme will be reworked. He had previously stated that the laptops that were ordered would be given to teachers to assist in the classrooms.
The government has been criticised for ending the programme abruptly and then citing that it would be reworked. Under the US$30 million project, the PPP administration had originally planned to distribute 90,000 computers to poor families over a three-year period.
