By Nicole Telford- “The allocation of government contracts is one of the key areas in which we see corruption and of course exclusion.” Alliance for Change (AFC) Catherine ‘Cathy’ Hughes, made this known during her presentation at the Washington Conference on Guyana held September 27-28.
Hughes, a parliamentarian in Guyana’s Opposition, A Partnership of National Unity and Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) 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.”
Hughes said the People’s Progressive Party /Civic Government has been disputing the allegations of corruption, discrimination and inequity, calling it 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 Five, an area on the West Coast of Berbice. “We are talking about roads in Region Five, 23 of them have gone to an area called Bush Lot and of course Bush Lot is a heavily Indian dominated community.”
The parliamentarian highlighted that of the 30 roads earmarked for building/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 were assigned 23 of the 30 roads and 1 each were assigned to 4 predominately African communities namely Number 30 Village, Number 28 Village, Catherinas Lust, Number 22 Village and Hopetown, and one each for two mixed communities, Lovely Lass and Onverwagt.
“In summary,” Hughes said, “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 people are not even in the game.”
Going further, the AFC chairperson pointed out that America or any normal country in the world, the data supplied would not be allowed to occur, but instead of apologising the PPP/C has refused to even refute the data.
Referencing a statement that came from Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo that “at least some villages are getting roads here that are Afro Guyanese and Mixed Villages,” Hughes noted the government’s response is never acknowledgement “this is a major problem and we will fix it.”
Touching on Guyana’s Central Housing and Planning Authority (CHPA), Hughes identified three major projects that “we are talking about that are $11 billion, $2.3 billion, in Eccles the road project $13.3 billion.” The allocation of the listed contractors “$849 million, VR Construction, an Indian Guyanese; we go on to Avenash an Indian Guyanese and one Construction Services Inc, had no previous experience as a construction company.”
Vouching for the authenticity of the data Hughes told attendees at the symposium, and the tens of thousands viewing worldwide, that “we checked, we actually checked when the company was registered so $ 2.1 billion that’s a Chinese and mixed company; not one in there is any African representation or Indigenous.”
If this kind of data exists, whether the problem that resulted in this is historical, there must be something that can be done to fix it, because an uneven platform has been created, as a result an “uneven environment within which an entire group of people has been systematically excluded” the Parliamentarian asserted.
“We have cases, where before the contract has not been started, or even completed, individuals have collected the largest portion of the contract. So you collect the money ..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 ”
Before wrapping up her presentation, in an apparent effort to remove any doubt of intent in presenting the data, Hughes told the conference “it’s not that we have anything against Indian Guyanese but if we are talking ‘one Guyana’ let the distribution of wealth reflect that.”
The Washington Conference on Guyana saw the collaboration of the Caribbean Guyana Institute For Democracy, the Guyanese Diaspora and local organisations participating to highlight discrimination and inequality in the distribution of Guyana resources in an oil and gas economy.
