–Jagdeo says, points to technical scrutiny underway to address irregularities before contracts are awarded
Vice President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo has reaffirmed that small contractors from all 10 administrative regions will benefit from government contracts, as the administration pushes ahead with the aim of widening opportunities and enhancing transparency in public procurement.
Speaking to reporters during a Monday public meeting where citizens met one-on-one with government officials to resolve various issues, Dr. Jagdeo said many persons had turned up specifically to inquire about contracts.
He noted that the government had launched a pre-qualification exercise for small contractors in order to formalise and broaden access to contracts, while ensuring compliance with the Procurement Act.
In the past, he noted, contracts valued below $15 million were awarded without a tender process, though still in keeping with the law, and this had helped “thousands of Guyanese.”
Some people, however, complained they were unaware of how to benefit, prompting the shift to a more structured system.
“We went through a pre-qualification exercise because we wanted to enhance transparency surrounding the award of contracts. We wanted to help more small people get contracts,” he said, adding, “We wanted to help more small people get contracts. So we, in the past, contracts were awarded to people below 15 million without a tender process consistent with the law, their Procurement Act, and thousands of Guyanese were helped.”
According to Jagdeo, nearly 12,000 small contractors submitted documents during the exercise.
He said the list is being vetted by technical staff to address several irregularities uncovered.
He pointed to cases where family members registered multiple companies, despite this being prohibited in the pre-qualification guidelines, and instances where large contractors attempted to enter the system through smaller operators.
“We’ve been vetting the list with a lot of difficulties. You have some people who… four family members might have four different companies, and we prohibited that in the pre-qualification document. Some others… big contractors who are trying to get in with a small contractor. So, it’s been a difficult exercise to clean the list or cleanse the list,” he said.
Jagdeo stressed that once the list is cleaned, the government’s intention is that every legitimately pre-qualified contractor will receive work overtime.
“I want everyone to know, once you’re pre-qualified legitimately… of the 12,000, 11,000 contractors are legitimately pre-qualified, [then] over the course of the year, we’ll try to get at least one contract each,” he said.
“But everyone wants to go in the first round… if they see now that some contracts are being awarded because we have to start at the beginning, they complain they are left out. But we can’t award 10,000 contracts at the same time,” he explained.
He emphasised that the core objective of the programme is to help small businesses grow.
“The idea was to help small people to grow. We campaigned on this, and we are doing it now. We never said it would be an easy task, because you have a lot of people who are trying to cheat the system, and we are sometimes caught in the middle, and we have to take tough decisions, but we will do so.”
Jagdeo contrasted the current policy with the previous approach to public contracts under the previous A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), accusing the former administration of favouring a narrow group of large contractors.
“Guyanese across Guyana, in all 10 regions, are going to benefit from additional procurement opportunities, particularly small people. We could have easily done like APNU and the others, and give the contracts to a few big people, which is what they did. That’s not our track record. We want to grow a lot of small people,” he affirmed.
