Vice President Dr Bharrat Jagdeo has assured that every legitimately prequalified small contractor will receive at least one contract this year, but cautioned that the process is being slowed down by widespread attempts to cheat the system.
Speaking with reporters on the sidelines of the Public Day hosted at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC), the VP said nearly 12,000 small contractors submitted pre-qualification documents as part of a government exercise aimed at making contract awards more transparent and accessible to small businesses.
However, he said getting the list has proven difficult. For instance, there are cases whereby family members registered multiple companies under different names, something he said is explicitly prohibited in the pre-qualification rules.
There are also some “big contractors who are trying to get in with the small contractors,” he explained.
“So it’s been a difficult exercise to clean the list or cleanse the list. We have done so on the ground with technical staff, ministerial involvement, hoping to clean up the list of pre-qualified contractors,” he added.
He pushed back against fraustration from contractors who feel they are being overlooked, explaining that the sheer volume of applicants makes it impossible to move everyone at once.
“We can’t award 10,000 contracts at the same time,” he emphasised.
VP Jagdeo also contrasted the current approach with how contracts were previously handled, saying the former administration awarded them to a small number of large contractors rather than spreading opportunities among smaller businesses.
Once the pre-qualified list is finalised, he said the goal is to ensure each contractor on it gets at least one contract over the course of the year.