Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday said that the more than 700 contracts totaling $10 billion that were recently handed out to small contractors, are for empowerment purposes and should not be seen as any “bribery” to get votes ahead of September’s elections.

The Vice President and Works Minister Juan Edghill, met with residents of Region 10 last week for discussions and the signing off of hundreds of millions of dollars in various public infrastructure contracts.

The Region 10 area is a stronghold of the opposition, People’s National Congress.

“I was there largely to meet with various groups not just contractors as some people believe, we are not embarrassed about meeting with contractors or talking about what we have done for people, it is not social bribery because what we have done in Linden now that we are approaching the elections is what we have done in almost all of the previous years since we have been in office,” Mr. Jagdeo told reporters.

He said he believes Lindeners are more receptive now to the PPP, explaining that his Government has invested heavily in Linden since returning to office in 2020. He recalled that a further $7 billion was invested in the community for community roads, projects previously and those contracts were handed out to more than 600 contractors.

‘And we are not doing a favour for the people there, we have just changed the system to empower people and to give them an opportunity to implement programmes that would have been hitherto implemented by a single individual and that is why we change the system where contracts below $15M for the programme are allocated on the basis of rates and not the bidding system,” the Vice President explained.

The Vice President said the Government has been focused on ensuring communities across the country benefit from its various programmes and initiatives.

“Thats is $10B in the pockets of that region, that in a single year only for one initiative under this government and as I said before, this is not because it is election year, this has happened in previous years too,” Jagdeo noted.

With elections just over two months away, Mr. Jagdeo said his party’s support base continues to grow in Linden and more activists will be on the ground as part of the campaign.

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