-following discovery of incomplete applications, absence of criteria

A SPECIAL audit of the 2019 Sustainable Livelihoods Entrepreneurial Development (SLED) programme has commenced and a separate report is expected to be issued by the Audit Office, after it was discovered that several beneficiaries did not complete applications forms and that criteria were not utilised for approval of the grants.
Some $250 million had been allocated to the programme in the 2019 national budget. It has been said that sums totalling $249.997 million were expended by the end of 2019 and Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo) received more than half of the allotment. However, according to the Auditor General’s 2019 Report “it was difficult to ascertain the reasons for granting approval to the respective beneficiaries.”

“Audit examination of a sample of beneficiaries’ files revealed that no application forms were completed, despite it being a requirement as stated in the notice inviting applications published in the newspapers. In addition, there was [sic] no criteria or checklist seen as utilised for the appraisal and approval of this grant,” the report stated.
An initiative geared at business and job creation in communities across the country, the SLED programme was set up in 2015 after the coalition government had taken up office, and has since seen $760 million invested over the years. The programme provided funding to persons and organisations for the support of entrepreneurial activities.
Some $115 million was allocated in its first year, while it received further allotments of $40 million, $100 million and $150 million in respective successive years. Over the years the programme had placed emphasis on support of businesses in hinterland communities.

Last year, the community of Hiawa, located in Central Rupununi, Region Nine, benefitted from an agricultural initiative which included sheep- rearing at a cost of $6 million and an $8 million multipurpose building.  More than 150 cooperatives comprising women and youths were said to have been among the beneficiaries from last year.
It was under this programme that former Director of Sport Christopher Jones controversially received $4.8 million in equipment for a barbershop he never built. The police in August seized pieces of equipment that were being stored at Jones’s home after an audit revealed that while the then Ministry of Social Protection had approved the disbursement of $4.8M, almost $1M in items were not physically delivered, but were instead being stored at Jones’s home, and neither had the project been executed.

When it commenced, the programme was overseen by the then Ministry of Communities and was later moved to the Ministry of Social Protection; the two ministries no longer exist. Under the current administration, the programme is being administered by the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development, and was allotted a further $105 million in the 2020 Budget.
Speaking with the Guyana Chronicle on Sunday, Minister of Local Government and Regional Development, Nigel Dharamlall, confirmed that the beneficiaries of the 2020 grants have already been selected and the ministry is currently working with them to have their business ventures implemented.

“We have applicants where projects have already started to be acted upon. We have already closed off the applications. The beneficiaries have already been identified and they are in the process of getting the resources to have the projects implemented. They are all small and vulnerable business people at a micro level, not at the big commercial level,” the minister related.
The minister could not at the time recall the number of beneficiaries or the business ventures involved.

Questioned about the improved steps taken to better monitor and manage the programme going forward, Minister Dharamlall said: “As part of the implementation modalities as well, we have put in place some sustainability criteria. We have established implementation modalities that deal with the entire process from applications, identification of the prospective beneficiaries, to monitoring implementation of the project and finally ensuring we do an assessment of the impact of how the project has impacted the lives that benefitted from it.”
He emphasised that the current programme is placing emphasis on businesses impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and loss of business in the past five months.