Former Auditor General Anand Goolsarran says a US$34m deal for a national electronic ID card among the Guyana Government, the UAE and a German company runs afoul of the country’s Procurement Act.
There was a hurried, virtual signing of the deal on Friday and no one in the government has explained why the Procurement Act was not complied with. The violation of the Procurement Act would be a matter for the Public Procurement Commission to examine.
Among questions being asked by a number of persons of the deal are: what is the source of funding for the project and if the money was loaned to this country by the UAE and on what terms; how is United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al Maktoum connected to the overall deal, and why a project that sees so much of a person’s data being accessed was not first ventilated in parliament or discussed with the public. According to the former Auditor General, al Maktoum owned the company from which the government procured more than $2 billion worth of Russian-made Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine in 2021.