E-Governance matters under scrutiny

Minister of State Joseph Harmon

– Govt charges Unit to supply information

The E-Governance Unit has been charged with providing the Administration with a complete report on all matters relating to the body and its activities. This mandate to the Unit was communicated to members of the media, who were in attendance at Wednesday’s post-Cabinet press briefing, hosted by Minister of State, Joseph Harmon, at the Ministry of the Presidency, Shiv Chanderpaul Drive.

The Minister explained that the advice to “cut its loss” was given by the Head of the Unit, Alexei Ramotar, to the previous Administration, and has nothing to do with what the current Government was doing. At the time, and according to Ramotar, based on information from sources in Venezuela, the repairs to the controversial fibre-optic cable project would cost in the vicinity of US$20 million, and, therefore, were not feasible. Ramotar recently told Harmon during a visit to the Unit’s Duke and Barrack Streets office that the cable had suffered about 40 per cent damage, the Government Information Agency (GINA) reported.

This was some four years after an agreement was signed between Guyana and Brazil, for the stringing of a fibre-optic cable.

However, Harmon has now requested “information from the Unit on the E-Government project, and all of its subsidiary activities” so that the present Government can review it.

Harmon also added that Ramotar was “still employed by the State, and so must produce all documents on the state of connectivity on other projects – towers, Internet, etc”. He said further that Ramotar advised him that “Internet connectivity is at a very advanced stage”.

The Minister elaborated that the overall purpose of E-Governance in Guyana is that the Government is aiming to better position itself to equip the Guyana Police Force (GPF) to fight crime and help schools and Ministries to perform their duties effectively.

He stated that Government was not about “competing with service providers like Guyana Telephone and Telegraph (GT&T) and Digicel, but to connect communities via hubs, with the Internet”.

Minister Harmon informed that Floyd Levi is the Administration’s Adviser on E-Governance, and that he was part of the team which visited the E-Governance Unit recently. Levi will also be on the team that will be reviewing the One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) Project.