Former OLPF Manager denies involvement in any wrongdoing

Jun 22, 2016 News

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To say that the review undertaken by Chartered Accountants of Ram and McRae into the operations of the One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) project was blown out of proportion would be an understatement.

This is the assertion of former OLPF Project Manager, Ms. Margot Boyce, who is convinced that she is among a selected few who were targeted to be scapegoats for a number of shortcomings uncovered by the auditors.
In fact, Boyce during an interview with this publication yesterday said that she sat quietly for weeks when she saw numerous inaccuracies reported in the press about the OLPF project and her involvement.
Ram and McRae based on its findings said that it found that the project was administered and contracted by the then Office of the President. It added that “the scope of our engagement was limited by the fact that management was unable to provide a number of significant documents for our review. We also encountered the circumstance where the Project Manager, Ms. Margot Boyce, and the Deputy Project Manager, Mr. Azariah Asim, resigned during the course of our engagement. In both cases, their last day for work was August 14, 2015.”
Boyce said that she was particularly perturbed after attempting to clarify with Head of Ram and McRae, Christopher Ram that she had not resigned as Project Manager during the course of the audit as the report states, but rather, her contract was terminated.
This publication was privy to an email Boyce sent to Ram indicating this development as well as a letter from the Ministry of the Presidency signed by Permanent Secretary, Omar Shariff, terminating Boyce’s contract.
According to the letter, “further to our conversation in July and August, please be formally advised that your contract which ends on August 14, 2015 will not be renewed…”
Boyce said that she was hopeful that the eventual report would have been rectified.
“I thought he would’ve said ‘oh we made a mistake’ or ‘Ms. Boyce did not resign…’ it was the report that says that I did so, and all he had to do was to own it and he didn’t own it, and I don’t know why; I don’t understand,” said Boyce who went on to point out that instead of blaming certain individuals for deficiencies within the project, the auditors could have instead pointed out that “these were the deficiencies we found with the system.”
The report is one that highlights issues ranging from financial systems and internal control being generally weak.
“It talks about so many issues in one aspect, and in another it contradicts what it is saying, and when I went on in 2012 my responsibility was distribution and training; acquisition was done by E-Government, and all the financing from the beginning was done by NFMU and they employed someone who had complete oversight over accounting…a chartered accountant,” Boyce related.
As such she highlighted that when questioned by auditors during the review, she made it clear that she would not take responsibility for the OLPF’s asset register, but she could provide them with the assets she came and met in 2012. Instead the report, Boyce noted, claimed that she said she did not know what an asset register was.
“The asset register continued…. there were purchases in 2011, purchases in 2012, whatever purchases were made is added to it, but for some strange reasons when in 2013 they decided that they want us at the Queenstown office to be responsible for the asset register. I said no, because I cannot take on something I did not have in the beginning, but what we will do is keep a record of all of the assets I went there and met…”
“It may not have been satisfactory and in accordance with accounting principles…but it is what it is and it is there and they have it,” Boyce asserted.
Based on the report, among the deficiencies of the OPLF project was the fact that a number of laptops had also gone missing. But Boyce is not accepting culpability.
In defending her honour, Boyce pointed out too that the office of the Auditor General was well aware of all of the laptops received by the OLPF project.
“I look at this report and I am saying it is all well and good to make these statements, but facts cannot change…”
“I don’t care what words are used and terms are thrown around, at the end of the day this is the reality. We live in a Guyana where we know that mediocrity is the order of the day, and we would be fooling ourselves if we say it isn’t. But even within the mediocrity, which is the order of the day, people are doing what they know to do best, and they try to achieve and do the right thing,” Boyce stressed.
According to her, while she is unaware when the report was actually written, the timing of its release was rather amusing.
“I am convinced that they were looking for a scapegoat…you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure this one out. Every time I turn around it’s this one laptop, and I’m reading about seeing all of these billions of dollars.”
“The first thing I told that man is that we didn’t have bank accounts, we didn’t even get a budget variance report…it has always been hands off, then all of a sudden it’s management and how I stopped the training, and then you’re talking about value for money. We had over 400 trainers throughout the length and breadth of Guyana,” said Boyce, even as she defended the staff size, which was also questioned by the auditors.
The OLPF project started in 2011 under the previous administration. However, because of some issues with the previous project manager, Boyce was asked to take up the position with particular focus on Distribution and Training in 2012. She has insisted that she was at no time involved in any wrongdoing associated with the project, and moreover, resents any attempt to implicate her in such.

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