Dear Editor,
I read with some interest an article headlined “Ramotar’s son paid over $32M, for ‘poor supervision’ of E-Governance Project.” It is a known fact that rambunctious headlines are what get newspapers sold. A quick look at the top five selling newspapers in the UK, for example, will show that all are tabloids. Unsurprisingly this is the path that has been taken by KN.
Like all tabloids the headlines and articles are usually devoid of facts. Although I have not received a copy of the forensic audit report, which in itself is highly irregular, it was quite satisfying that KN deemed it worthy to highlight my remuneration. It points to the obvious fact that like many other forensic audits conducted by the new administration, there has been absolutely no evidence of fraud, embezzlement or corruption. After all that is the purpose of a forensic audit.
I will, however, admit that a headline stating “No Fraud discovered at E-Governance Project” is not sexy. Regrettably, the modus operandi of this newspaper throughout its reporting on the forensic audits has been a crass disinterest in reporting the facts; that there has been no evidence that any entity or individual has committed fraud, embezzlement or has been involved in corrupt practices. Therefore KN has instead had to write about remunerations as in the cases of Valmikki Singh, the accounting department at OLPF and me or who’s the father of whom as in the cases of Azariah Assim, Abdallah Hamilton and again me.
The article tries to further obfuscate facts by making a claim that the E-Governance Project was a failure. The E-Governance Project was in fact completed in August of 2014. The project was completed within its scheduled timeline and budget.
In fact the technical scope of the project was expanded without incurring either any financial or time scheduling penalties. The credit for this goes to the hardworking team that from mid-2009 worked on all aspects of the project from design, budgeting, scheduling and implementation.
To denigrate the efforts of my team is to do a disservice to dedicated Guyanese in a rather sad attempt at politicking.
Sincerely,
Alexei Ramotar
