Latest update October 15th, 2026 10:30 AM
Another take!
There are small contractors who refuse to do any business with government. The most common complaint is that the government takes a long time to pay.
Small contractors cannot afford delays in payments. This destroys their cash flow. It makes them unreliable to their suppliers and to their workers. Credit will be dry up. Workers will go elsewhere; the business suffers. These businesses cannot meet their expenses and can find themselves in difficulty. They therefore refuse to compete for government contracts.
It is one thing to be owed by government. It is another thing to be owed by government and have to wait a long time to be paid. But it is even far more injurious to be owed by government, to suffer long delays in payment, and then to be told that a part payment will become a full and final settlement. It is rubbing salt into that wound when on top of being short-paid, the government will turn around and say to these contractors, “take it or leave it.”
The government has assumed the debts of Homestretch Development Inc (HDI), a private company set up by the government. The government, however, is deciding how much it will pay. It has stated how it came about the sum of $500M; whether or not it verified the authenticity of the claims made. It is just as reckless for the government to pay out the $500M without any such verification as it is for them to have said “take it or leave it.”
If the government is bailing out a private company it has to have verification of that debt. It simply cannot decide to pay out a sum without verifying that the work was done to satisfaction. Has the government done this? Or is it simply accepting the claims made? Suppose some of those claims are bloated or false? It means that the issue can go beyond short-paying contractors. It can become a case of rewarding persons for shoddy work, and in some instances, even making fraudulent claims.
The time has come for a full disclosure as to this project. The time has long passed for defences about patriotic duty. This was a major project. The final cost has either approached one billion dollars or has surpassed it. The government simply cannot ignore the concerns which are being expressed as to the process involved in soliciting donations for this project and the contracting of companies and individuals to undertake the substantial works which were done.
The public has a right to know. They have a right to know why the private company was formed in the first place. Was there an expectation that the entirety of this project would have been financed from private donations?
According to the minimal record made public, the donations were insubstantial relative to the overall project costs and its debt? So why a private company when the asset to be developed belongs, and still does, to the people of Guyana.
The names of those contracted and owed must be made public. From all accounts, the private company was undertaking public works. The National Assembly is owed the names of all those involved and how much each is owed.
The people of Guyana are owed accountability. State funds have to be used to settle debts and therefore there should be no secrecy about the beneficiaries of those funds, the purposes of the debts accrued and the process by which they were accrued.
The contractors are owed. They are owed money. They cannot go to their bankers and tell these bankers, “take it or leave it.”
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