GOVERNMENT has said that, as a responsible institution, it simply cannot, because of an allegation, call up Strategic Action Security and terminate all contracts that agency has been awarded. Minister within the Ministry of Finance, Bishop Juan Edghill, made this point yesterday while
speaking in the context of the Guyana Police Force’s recent massive find of millions of dollars worth of stolen items, including several laptops linked to government’s ‘One Laptop Per Family’ (OLPF) programme, at the firm’s Queenstown office.

As owner of the security firm, Richard Kanhai was subsequently taken into police custody even as the articles were confiscated.

The Bishop hosted a press conference yesterday at the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Freedom House headquarters in Georgetown, along with Legal Affairs Minister, Anil Nandlall, Executive Secretary, Zulfikar Mustapha, and Media Coordinator, Mahendra Roopnarine, at which he explained that a contractor is usually awarded a contract because he has satisfied the technical, financial and administrative specifications of a bid that is by way of a public process.

In this instance, Edghill said, Kanhai and the security firm won the right as an independent contractor to provide certain services.

Meanwhile, Nandlall offered that Guyana’s Constitution confers upon a person a fundamental right of a presumption of innocence, until proven guilty.
“The government would be wrong to go upon a witch hunt to penalize persons based upon the mere institution of a charge,” he remarked.