By Steven Vickerie
The Sustainable Livelihoods Entrepreneurial Development (SLED) Programme Audit Report of 2019 has named several persons of interest, including three Members of Parliament, and the son of one Assembly member. This was revealed by Minister of Labour Joseph Hamilton, in an exclusive interview with Guyana Standard. He said, “Mr. Christopher Jones is mentioned. You know he got millions to do barber chairs. Mr. Jermain Figuera’s name is also mentioned… And I can go on.”
In another instance, the report, according to Minister Hamilton, outlined that funds were directed to a National Assembly member’s son, who reportedly also mismanaged the money he was allocated.
“One of their own MPs, Mr. Vincent Henry from Region 9, he had his hands on $165M that was to be distributed to so called Co-op societies and the audit report in one instance said that one of his son’s, he was selling cows, bulls, to another son. These were funds from the SLED programme,” Hamilton said.
He continued, “I will make the report available publicly because I want the people of Guyana to know where these funds went. These are monies that were intended to develop various communities and projects but based on the report you will see how millions of dollars were mismanaged.”
According to the Ministry of Labour’s records, it has been able to track projects that account for $234.644 million from the programme. These monies were distributed to projects carried out by either cooperative societies, or individuals. Some $6,275,029 is recorded as going to Region Two; another $13,691,535 went to Region Three; $7,907, 103 went to Region Four; $12,057,356 to Region Five; $209,307 to Region Six; $802,310 to Region Seven; $169,489,990 to Region Nine; and $24,211,422 to Region 10.
Of the $234.644 million, a total of $21,985,838 went to individuals, and $212,658,214 went to co-op societies. Hamilton noted that in many cases, the cooperatives were not registered with the co-ops division of the Ministry of Labour.
