Several staff members of the One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) office implicated in the theft of more than 100 computers are to be subjected to lie detector tests the government has announced.
The revelation came from chief spokesman Dr. Roger Luncheon on Friday at his weekly post-Cabinet news briefing.
“We told those members of staff who had been … identified as implicated in the irregularities surrounding the losses of laptops, we said to them, integrity testing would be done to assist in confirming their innocence.
He confirmed that this included polygraph tests commonly called lie detector tests. Dr. Luncheon stated that the tests should be done before the end of the year.
“One hundred plus laptops disappeared; we were unable using conventional means to establish yea verily these are the perpetrators of this great evil. We are hoping, we have been told, we have reason to believe that polygraphy could assist.
Dr. Luncheon added that several other persons will also undergo the screening though he did not elaborate on who they were.
Six OLPF staffers were sent home with immediate effect in August over the missing netbooks and police investigators were called in.
The 150 computers were reportedly stolen from the OLPF’s warehouse situated at Forshaw Street, Queenstown, Georgetown.
The OLPF project was the brainchild of former President Bharrat Jagdeo with the aim of bridging the digital divide between Guyana and the rest of the world. A target of 90,000 laptops is to be given out to families across the country during the life of the project.
