Former project manager of the One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) initiative Jud Lohmeyer says that he had envisioned using the “summer” camps hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports to distribute 12,000 laptops to students this year.
“The single largest means of distributing laptops within OLPF was through the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports [CYS] summer camps. I was preparing to execute the delivery of 12,000 laptops during the 2011 CYS summer camps across the country,” Lohmeyer said via email, in response to questions sent by this newspaper. “We were coordinating with the Ministry of Education to hold summer camps in communities that would have ICT labs in their local schools by September. Students in those schools would [have] been contacted this last February and invited to participate in the CYS summer camp of which one of the sessions each day would be a OLPF training session,” he said.
The OLPF was officially launched in January, but to date no official project document has been released by the administration. However, it does not appear as if the government will be implementing the OLPF in the manner Lohmeyer had proposed, since the emphasis now is on targeting youths through existing community groups.
Lohmeyer said that to participate in these OLPF ‘summer’ camps, “students would [have] needed to maintain passing grades, maintain acceptable attendance in classes and provide some number of hours of community service during the February to June time-frame.” The attendees, Lohmeyer said, would have received a laptop for their family to keep at the end of the camp. “These students would then return to classes in September to a school with an ICT lab,” Lohmeyer said. According to him, “these students would now be prepared to learn advanced business productivity applications found in Microsoft Office: Word, Excel, Access and Power Point.” He said he had recommended to the Ministry of Education that “they start requiring students with laptops to turn in their assignments typed and spell checked possibly through email.”
This system, Lohmeyer said, was conceptualised to reduce project costs and to utilise projects and management.
Lohmeyer said he resigned from his post in November after it became clear that there were two plans in place for the OLPF project. According to him, he learnt that Steven Grin, the Head of the Project Management Unit in the Office of the President (OP), was planning to outsource the project while he (Lohmeyer) was working on executing the project locally. In recent days, Lohmeyer has clashed with OP over his request for outstanding payments, which he said are owed to him. OP, on the other hand, has accused Lohmeyer of issuing threats of blackmail. Lohmeyer, OP said, has been “threatening to disclose to the media aspects of his work experiences as the consultant for the launch of the OLPF initiative, unless he was paid about US$9,000 subsequent to his separation from the job.”
This has, however, been staunchly denied by Lohmeyer. He said he contacted Grin and requested outstanding payments. According to him, he had complied with the terms of his contract but has only been paid for five days he worked after giving 30 days notice of his resignation.
At the launch, the current project manager Sesh Sukhdeo said that it had been challenging developing a simple model for the OLPF project that would work. He then indicated that a decision had been made to implement the plan via existing community groups.
Speaking to Stabroek News after the launching ceremony, Sukhdeo said that at present 20 community centres are actively engaging the Project Management Office. He said the next set of computers to be distributed would be given to these groups. At the launch, 142 netbooks were ceremonially handed over to students from four institutions across the country. These instruments were purchased with a US$50,000 gift from Chinese company Huawei, apparently at an approximate cost of US$352 per instrument.
Sukhdeo said groups interested in benefiting under this programme should make an application to the Project Management Office. The applications should include details about the group and include a plan as to how the computers would be used to benefit the community.
He said the applications would be examined and then there will be an orientation. Those who benefit from the computers have to undertake to train others. Sukhdeo said that at the end of the orientation and “when everybody is comfortable,” then the individuals would be able to take the laptops home. Before this is done, the parents in the home would have to indicate their support and commit to learning as well.
Recent efforts to contact Sukhdeo for more details on the project have been unsuccessful. However, Office of the President Press and Publicity Officer Kwame McCoy told this newspaper that the project is progressing and that applications have been coming in from organisations interested in executing the project. “The priority right now is the applications that are coming in from organisations that will be accredited,” McCoy said.
Regarding the release of a project document, McCoy said that this was not necessary. The parliamentary opposition has called for such a document to be released on several occasions. According to McCoy, if the opposition wants this they should make a request through Parliament.
The government has budgeted $1.8 billion to acquire approximately 27,000 laptops this year. President Bharrat Jagdeo also announced an intention to tap into a US$8 million ($1.6 billion) grant from the Chinese government. With both sets of money, the administration may be able to acquire some 50,000 instruments this year, Jagdeo said at a press conference last month.
Asked also whether a project profile will be provided, McCoy stated that all the money spent will be subject to the usual internal checks and balances. He said too that the project will be audited.
The acquisition of instruments for the OLPF project came under intense scrutiny after Minister in the Ministry of Finance Jennifer Webster, while addressing the National Assembly, quoted an incorrect price for the computers being purchased. She also said that all computers being acquired for the project were being done by an open competitive tender. However, it was later disclosed by President Jagdeo that the first set of instruments distributed had been donated by Huawei.
