It took a foreigner to help confirm what most Guyanese long knew about Govt.

Mar 20, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
American Judson Lohmeyer’s myriad revelations about the goings on in the Office of the President-run (OP) One Laptop Per Family project were an embarrassing quake-triggered tsunami of political waves that have left OP in such a massive mess, it will be impossible for anyone in OP to ever clean it up before Election Day.
I read his so-called ‘blackmail’ letter released by the government, and even if I were to agree with the blackmail label, why would the government carelessly risk having Mr. Lohmeyer embarrass it over a few thousand US dollars, knowing that he was privy to information that could damage it further in the eyes of Guyanese, Norway and the World Bank?
There are now more questions about the government than there are about bit-player Mr. Lohmeyer, because other than releasing the ‘blackmail’ letter and describing him as a scoundrel, who embellished his qualifications, OP has not categorically denied anything he said.
For example, Mr. Lohmeyer revealed that President Jagdeo granted Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd a US$15 million contract to run cables across Guyana.
As a result of such generosity by the President, the CEO of Huawei reportedly gave the President a US$50,000 as a ‘gift’, which was used to kick off the OLPF with the purchase of 142 laptop computers. Did Mr. Lohmeyer make up this US$50,000 gift angle, or does government have a rebuttal in the making?
And when OP said he embellished his qualifications, was this hindsight discovery an excuse for government failing to conduct due diligence background check on Mr. Lohmeyer? For Mr. Lohmeyer to go from a US Peace Corps Volunteer attached to the Ministry of Education earning G$40,000 (US$200) a month to Senior Project Manager on the OLPF project in the Project Management Office earning up to US$100,000 a year tax-free is a quantum leap that justified a background check.
The man could have been a spy and the Jagdeo administration would still be none the wiser!
That leads me to now ask whether a background check was done on Mr. Steve Grin, another foreigner who reportedly was Mr. Lohmeyer’s supervisor. And if Mr. Lohmeyer was getting US$100,000 a year, how much is Mr. Grin being paid?
Kaieteur News columnist, Mr. Freddie Kissoon, did a piece, “Grindella and Mr. Grin in the Office of the President,” (Sunday, February 27), in which he cited a memo purportedly obtained from OP showing Permanent Secretary in OP, Dr. Nanda Gopaul requesting Finance Minister, Dr, Ashni Singh, to make a payment to Mr. Grin.
Here is part of what the memo said: “Please be informed that the Administration of the Office of the President is hereby requesting the urgent release of funds to pay consultancy fees for the month of December 2010 to Mr. Steven Grin, in the sum US$14,618.00 respectively, from the below mentioned Head and Subhead on Charge: Head of Charge 031 – Ministry of Finance; Programme 0310000 – Ministry of Administration; Activity 0310201; Line Item 6284 – Other.”
If the foregoing is true, then at US$14,618 a month, Mr. Grin is earning in excess of US$170,000 a year, and if it is tax-free, then where is the sense of fairness for hardworking, meager-earning Guyanese burdened with income taxes and VAT? By comparison, New York’s Governor earns a taxable US$179,000 a year and his responsibilities are more onerous than Mr. Grin’s. Little wonder there is so much confusion and lack of transparency surrounding the OLPF! Aren’t Guyanese being robbed with their eyes wide shut?
Then there is the revelation that, besides being an IT consultant at the Office of the President, Mr. Lohmeyer also doubled as a Renewable Energy Consultant with the Iwokrama International Centre for Rainforest Conservation.
This deserves at least some sort of explanation from OP, because even if Mr. Lohmeyer misrepresented his credentials as an IT specialist, what made the government believe he was duly qualified to be in involved in rain forest conservation in Guyana?
Norway, which offered to pay to help preserve Guyana’s rainforest, would do well to pay close attention here, because according to Mr. Lohmeyer, government plans to have a new contractor take over the OLPF free of cost, in exchange for the management of all the other LCDS projects in which the government hoped to draw down on US$250 million from Norway. Anyone seen the gimmickry here?
Mr. Editor, this is March 2011 and despite government promises that it will draw down the first two tranches of the money from Norway by now, it has not. Even Finance Minister, Dr. Singh, factored in the Norway US$70 million in his 2010 budget, after he and the President publicly ridiculed the World Bank for not releasing the money fast enough.
So did government put the cart before the horse and started spending hundreds of thousands of US dollars on assumed LCDS-related projects in anticipation of receiving the money from Norway via the World Bank?
Reviewing the revelations by Mr. Lohmeyer, it is impossible to doubt him. Why? He worked in OP, where transparency is a forbidden practice. Sadly for the President, it took a foreigner to help confirm what most Guyanese either knew or suspected a long, long time ago.
Not that we needed Mr. Lohmeyer’s revelations, but it helps our case against the government when he reportedly said it is an open secret in OP that OLPF is a political gimmick to buy election votes, but has since become a ‘pay to play game’ where everyone is getting big money. And that most of the major projects that the government had embarked on, including the Amaila Falls hydro project, would not come to fruition soon.
We should also believe him when he said aides in OP are of the impression that the President would like to remain in office beyond 2011 primarily to see projects he started come to completion. However, to most observers any attempt by the President to stay on would be to protect his government from being exposed for a host of financial shenanigans. Thank you, Mr. Lohmeyer, albeit in a backhanded sense, for your revelations about the Caribbean’s most corrupt government.
Emile Mervin

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