Linden wants to administer business development projects

Region Ten Chairman Sharma Solomon

Just days after President Donald Ramotar’s undertaking that government will provide support for accelerated job-creation in Linden, Region Ten Chairman Sharma Solomon has told Stabroek Business that state-initiated programmes designed to generate private sector activity in the mining community must not only have the backing of the community, but must be free of official controls that place unacceptable limits on Lindeners’ ability to determine how such programmes are managed.

Solomon told Stabroek Business that it is important that the envisaged criteria for the implementation of state-backed development projects for Linden take account of the experience of the European Union-funded Linden Economic Advancement Programme (LEAP), which he said, failed to meet the objectives that had been set for it. In this regard, he identified government control of the LEAP Board and the misapplication of substantial amounts of its finances as being among the reasons why the project fell short of expectations. According to Solomon of the $2.2 billion allocated to the LEAP project more than $1 billion was expended on consultancies while half of the remaining amount was spent on projects in which the people of Linden had little say. “The fact is that as far as impacting on the development of the Linden community is concerned LEAP has been a very forgettable project,” Solomon said.

LEAP was a Government of Guyana and European Union programme which had the objective of