APNU/AFC paid climate change consultant $1.2M per month

– Harmon defends sum, lauds consultant for Green State Development Strategy

Day one of the perusal of the 2020 budget estimates has revealed that the former A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) hired and paid a consultant $1.2 million a month, a situation the new Government has now inherited.

This was revealed by Minister of Governance, Gail Teixeira, who noted that the former APNU/AFC Government paid the consultant US$6000 or $1.2 million a month. Under questioning from Attorney General Anil Nandlall, Teixeira explained that the consultant was attached to the Office of the President and specialises in climate change.
Payments to the consultant were being made under line item 6294, other, in the area of Policy Development and Administration under the Office of the President. A sum of $120.2 million was allocated in the 2019 budget for this line item, with a further $34.1 million budgeted for 2020. Teixeira laid out how the money was used.
“The consultant is in the PMO, which is the Policy Management Office and he is dealing with climate change… $120 million was spent in 2019. It has been reduced. 6294 is where a large percentage of it was spent on this consultant, who is paid approximately US$6000 a month,” she explained.

While Teixeira did not name the consultant, it did not take long for Opposition Leader Joseph Harmon to spill the beans. In a video broadcast, Harmon, who as former Minister of State would have had oversight of the consultant, identified him as Office of the President Project Manager Dr Marlon Bristol.
According to Harmon, Bristol’s $1.2 million salary is actually a reduction compared to what his predecessor earned. Harmon highlighted as one of Bristol’s accomplishments, the Green State Development Strategy (GSDS), although the document has been much criticised by the new People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Government.
“Dr Marlon Bristol is well researched. He’s well written. Anyone can go and google and check on the quality of his work,” said Harmon, who himself earned $900,000 per month plus benefits as Director General of the Ministry of the Presidency until he was fired by the PPP Government.

“For the PPP to now say that we now paid a consultant US$6000 and it’s making news, I wanted to clarify that. The consultant that was paid US$6000 was doing twice the work (of previous consultants).” Harmon also said.
Last year, Bristol was among a number of public officials who were identified as having received large tracts of land, including 12 acres in Dalawala, Linden. He got these tracts of lands within two years of applying.
The GSDS that he piloted and launched in 2019 follows in the footsteps of the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) initiated by the former PPP Government. It is a framework that is supposed to incorporate economic development programmes with strategies to promote the fight against global warming. Along the way, these programmes are supposed to be funded from the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund.
However, then Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo (now Vice President) had previously said that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) would scrap the Green State Strategy when it got back into power, since it would put a strain on the treasury.
Some of the differences that Jagdeo had highlighted between the coalition’s GSDS and his party’s LCDS, was the fact that the LCDS was developed from over 1000 engagements and with one foreign consultant who did pro bono work on the theoretical base of the strategy. The GSDS, on the other hand, Jagdeo noted, was developed by external consultants.
Further, Jagdeo had said that unlike the coalition’s strategy which will be funded not only by taxpayers’ money but revenues from the impending oil and gas as well, the LCDS identified ways of using the country’s strategic assets to make money.
Another area Jagdeo highlighted was the fact that the LCDS had identified specific projects to decarbonise the energy sector. One such project, he noted, was the Amaila Falls Hydro Project, which was scrapped by the APNU/AFC.
Other projects Jagdeo had noted that were crafted under the LCDS were Amerindian land titling, Information Communication Technology (ICT) development in hinterland communities and a grant scheme for small business.