| – says OLPF was a political gimmick that is turning into a pay to pay game where everyone is getting big moneyFormer Office of the President consultant on the One Laptop Per Family, Jud Lohmeyer said he is surprised by the response of OP to his request for his emoluments following his resignation from the position.Lohmeyer, in an exclusive interview with Mark Benschop on his Guyanaobservernews.org internet radio, said that he was under no obligation to not disclose aspects of the programme.The Guyana government has accused Lohmeyer of attempting to blackmail them, by threatening to disclose information regarding President Bharat Jagdeo’s One Laptop Per Family programme,Jerseys From China Online, unless he receives his severance pay.Lohmeyer, a former Peace Corps Volunteer, who was attached to the Ministry of Education, served as Senior Project Manager in the Office of the President for the OLPF Project for a year, starting in November 2009. He was hired to manage the distribution of 90,000 laptops to Guyanese families to foster Information and Communications Technology skills development in Guyana.The Office of the President said that he was hired based on his US Peace Corps credentials and ICT experience.“This foolish attempt by this individual is unlikely to impair the administration’s commitment to the One Laptop per Family initiative,” the Office of the President stated.While a consultant at the Office of the President, Lohmeyer also doubled as IT and Renewable Energy Consultant with the Iwokrama International Centre for Rainforest Conservation.According to Lohmeyer, following his resignation late last year, he had written to his former direct supervisor at the Office of the President, Steven Grin,Cheap Jerseys Authentic, requesting payment in full as per the consulting agreement he signed with the Office of the President.“That agreement stipulated that I would be paid thirty days upon giving my thirty days notice…whether I resigned or was terminated by the Office of the President. That did not happen and I was paid for approximately five days after I gave notice to Dr. Luncheon on November 16 (last year),” Lohmeyer stated.The former OP Consultant said that he is under no non disclosure agreement, since he was never asked not to disclose any of his work and discussions as it related to the OLPF.“So I’m not sure why they have termed this a blackmail attempt. I’ve made available…a copy of my resignation letter , a copy of the contract with the Office of the President, a copy of the e-mail I sent to Steven Grin, a copy of the e-mail that Dr. Gopaul sent me and a copy of the e-mail that I responded to Dr. Gopaul,” Lohmeyer said.He said that all of the discussions he has had with the Office of the President were made public and it is for the Guyanese nation to decide whether or not it is blackmail on his part.Lohmeyer said that he commenced work on the OLPF in 2009 under Edward Dreyfus, who was at the time the head of the project management office.As part of his work he held discussions with stakeholders on the President’s vision to provide computers to families across Guyana.During this period he was still a Peace Corps Volunteer and when that assignment ended, he was officially contracted by the Guyana government as a project manager.Jud Lohmeyer“I put together a number of documents,Jerseys NFL Wholesale, budgets for how to proceed with the President’s vision of distributing 90,000 laptops to Guyanese,” he explained.However, there appears to be a stumbling block with regards to the plan established by Lohmeyer for the OLPF.This had to do with a change of plan by Steven Grin to have another contractor take over the management the OLPF from August this year.According to Lohmeyer, the plan was to have the 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$250M from Norway.He said that the challenge that now faces the new planners of the OLPF programme is that they never met with the stakeholders and basically they are back to square one.Lohmeyer confirmed that he was paid a whopping US$100,000 per year by the government when he joined the OLPF project, a figure he considers quite a hefty sum.“I came to Guyana as a Peace Corps Volunteer for two years and lived and worked on G$40,000 a month, so I’m not unfamiliar with what it’s like to live in Guyana. I did not come from Manhattan for those types of salaries. Frankly I was shocked at the amount of money they offered me to run the project. However, I accepted the project and the position, and I did my best to further something that was a dream for me to have an opportunity to really give back to Guyana in a large scale project,” Lohmeyer told benschopradio.He said that since working at the Office of the President, he did not have to pay taxes, his salary was a fortune when compared with anyone working for that kind of money in the USA.But what prompted his resignation? According to him, once it became clear that there were two plans in place—the plan to outsource the OLPF and the one he was working on—there appeared to be no need for him.He said that based on the resume he has seen of Steven Grin,Cheap Jerseys From China, who eventually took over the management of the project, the man has no real background in the management of an IT programme and may not be suited for a social project such as the one he has now been put to manage.Lohmeyer is not too optimistic that the OLPF will come to fruition soon, since according to him, the move by the administration to shift course rather than work with the already existing recommendation will be counterproductive to a project of such magnitude.“It will take at least a year to build a new infrastructure, to implement this project,” Lohmeyer said.He said that for him, it is not a matter of being bitter with the government for accusing him of blackmail.“This is really more for me a disappointment. This has been something that I’ve worked on as a Peace Corps Volunteer and then in the government. This was a dream for me to have an opportunity like this to work and to use my skills in IT to do a project. That’s why an individual goes into the Peace Corps. So I’m not bitter, I’m disappointed that the project took a turn more towards the bureaucratic approach. The vision we had was a simple one which was to be a very low cost effort-relatively inexpensive laptops-and very low cost implementation,” Lohmeyer stated.He added that without the proper management the OLPF is in severe jeopardy and that is what saddens him, since it is turning into a pay to pay game where everyone is getting big money.He said that it was an open secret in the Office of the President that the OLPF was a political gimmick, since most of the major projects that the government had embarked on would not have come to fruition soon,Cheap Jerseys From China Online, including the Amaila Falls project.According to Lohmeyer,Jerseys NFL Wholesale, the OLPF programme was just a bold faced elections trick to buy votes with laptops.He said that he will not be taking legal action against the Guyana government for the money he is owed but will just cut his losses, since the cost of legal action is prohibitive. |
