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‘A Partnership for National Unity and Alliance for Change’ (APNU+AFC) Parliamentarian Cathy Hughes says, “The allocation of government contracts is one of the key areas in which we see corruption and, of course, exclusion.” The ‘A Partnership for National Unity and Alliance for Change’ (APNU+AFC) made the comments during her presentation at the Washington Conference on Guyana.
Hughes said there was no advertisement for the offshore oil blocks anywhere in Guyana, “so it is not like we could have been able to come up with the funds amongst ourselves, with the diaspora, international financing, or whatever; we were excluded from the game.” The Guyana government had announced that they had received offers for eight blocks.
Hughes said the Peoples Progressive Civic Government has been disputing the allegations of corruption, discrimination, and inequity, calling them an illusion and a myth, but the data she outlined in several sectors of the economy provided an assessment and food for thought.
The Parliamentarian commencing her data-driven delivery walked the audience firstly through the 2023 budgetary allocation for roads in Region 5, West Coast, Berbice.“We are talking about roads in Region 5, as you can see here.” Pointing to the data, “23 of them have gone to an area called Bush Lot and of course, Bush Lot is a heavily Indian-dominated community.”
As she continued, Hughes highlighted that of the thirty roads earmarked for building or rehabilitation in the Region 5 area between Union/Naarstigheid and Fort Wellington, some 30 roads were earmarked to be done, but the predominantly Indian-populated Bush Lot was assigned 23 of the 30 roads, and 1 each was assigned to 4 predominately African communities, namely Number 30 Village, Number 28 Village, Cathrine Lust, Number 22 Village, and Hopetown, and 1 each for two mixed communities, Lovely Lass and Onverwagt.
Parliamentarian Hughes said, “In summary, 76% of the funding for road contracts have gone to an Indian community so far in 2023, 16% has been awarded to African communities, 6% to mixed communities; and unfortunately, our indigenous Amerindian are not even in the game.”
The AFC Parliamentary Representative said in America or any normal country in the world, the data supplied would not be allowed to occur, but instead of apologizing, the PPP/C has refused to even refute the data, quoting a statement that came from Vice President Bharat Jagdeo: “At least some villages are getting roads here that are Afro-Guyanese and mixed millages”. She said they do not respond by saying this is a major problem and we will fix it.
Touching on Guyana’s Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA), she identified three major projects. “We are talking about projects that are 11 billion, 2.3 billion, and in Eccles, the road project is 13.3 billion.”. She said the allocation of the listed contractors was “849 million VR Construction, an Indian Guyanese; we go on to Avenesh, an Indian Guyanese; and this one Leherd Construction Services, had no previous experience as a construction company; we checked, we actually checked when the company was registered, so 2.1 billion dollars; that’s a Chinese and mixed community; not one in there has any African representation or Indigenous.”
Hughes said if this kind of data exists, whether the problem that resulted in it is historical, there must be something that can be done to fix it because an uneven platform has been created as a result of an “uneven environment within which an entire group of people has been systematically excluded.” The Parliamentarian said, “We have cases where, before the contract has been started or even completed, individuals have collected the largest portion of the contract so you collect the money, and then you say how much ever billion is to go and buy all the equipment and then it ties you into ensuring that you are the only one that qualifies for these contracts.”
The Washington Conference on Guyana saw the collaboration of the Caribbean Institute on Democracy, the Guyanese Diaspora, and other organizations to highlight discrimination and inequality in the distribution of Guyana’s resources in an oil and gas economy.
