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OLPF project was wasting taxpayers’ money – Minister of State
The One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) project, launched under the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) administration, was wasting taxpayers’ money, said Minister of State, Joseph Harmon, yesterday.
Minister of State, Joseph Harmon, addressing
attendees at the Stabroek Square last evening.
Addressing a crowd last evening at a public meeting at the Stabroek Market Square, Georgetown, Minister Harmon took the opportunity to reveal to the public, some of what the APNU+AFC (Alliance For Change) administration had discovered since taking charge.
The gathering was specifically organised by the Peoples’ National Congress/Reform (PNCR), one of the political parties in the coalition A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) as a way of thanking its supporters for bringing about change in Guyana following the May 11 elections.
However, the meeting was not all about gratitude. One of these revelations was that a storeroom filled with OLPF laptops was discovered on a recent visit to the project’s head offices in Queenstown, Georgetown.
The PPP/C administration launched the OLPF project in January 2011. The government at the time had planned that under the project it would distribute 90,000 computers to poor families across the country over a three-year period. The US$30M initiative had only distributed 27,000 units by the end of 2012.
“I went to the bottom floor of this building (OLPF offices) to a holding room full of computers,” Minister Harmon related. After the Minister inquired about the reason for the stocked room, he was informed that those laptops were not operational and were useless.
Minister Harmon called the PPP/C initiated project a “massive fraud” conducted by the previous government.
The bulk of the laptops for the project, he said, were “useless” and “no good”. He added that while a number of laptops were donated by foreign agencies, most of the laptops utilised for the project were paid for by taxpayers.
The previous administration had touted the project as a huge success, but Harmon said he saw it necessary to review OLPF, further citing his reason for sacking those persons employed under the initiative.
Yesterday, it was reported in sections of the media that the current administration had dismissed the services of approximately 40 OLPF employees, an act that was condemned by the Opposition PPP/C.
Minister Harmon said that during his visit to the OLPF offices, a number of employees appeared to be busy at work. He witnessed some inconsistencies in agencies operations. An employee working on a file dated 2013, despite the current year being 2015.
When the inconsistency was highlighted to the employee, Harmon said it became apparent that the OLPF offices were putting on a “pappy show” for him.
“Everybody [was] busy doing nothing. 70-something people in one building, 70-something people employed by this government, getting nice fancy salaries while they [the PPP/C administration] couldn’t pay the public servants their little wage,” Harmon told attendees.
He asked that those gathered empathise with those employees as he thought them to be honest working people who were “duped” by a previous government that promised them that they were part of a worthy initiative.
Despite this, the Minister said that the OLPF was still wasting taxpayers’ money as employees were employed to essentially do nothing with ineffective computers.
He related that dismissing the OLPF employees pained his heart but was a necessary step as retaining the over 70 employees would also have been criticised by the Bharrat Jagdeo-led PPP/C Opposition as being unnecessary.
According to Minister Harmon he explained to those he sacked that there was no work for them to do and that the government cannot pay the “people’s money” to do nothing.
He said that he told the dismissed employees that “it might be better if you find alternative employment where you can be better utilised.”
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