A massive 164,000 acres of prime State Forest located along the Berbice River has been allocated to known Government financier, Lloyd Singh.
Lloyd Singh
This allocation was made three days before General and Regional Elections under very suspicious circumstances. Incidentally, it is one of the same areas that the current APNU/AFC Administration repossessed recently.
Guyana Times was told that the last-minute allocation of Guyana’s State Forest was done via a rushed and uncompetitive process that was engineered to favour this particular individual. A source at the Guyana Forestry Commission told this newspaper that it is highly unusual that an area of this stocking and location had only a sole applicant.
Singh is a known financier of the Government – the minor party in the coalition administration. In fact, he had even funded the party’s head office located on the Kitty Railway and Embankment in Georgetown. At the time party Leader Raphael Trotman said in reference to Singh’s apparent generosity, “Businessmen make investments in political parties and expect a return on their investments.”
Since getting into office, Singh has benefited from several contracts under the APNU/AFC coalition. However, these were not without controversy.
Additionally, he was also embroiled in controversy over the US$50 million Hope Beach Wind Farm project, which was handed to him by Public Infrastructure Minister David Patterson, who is the General Secretary of the AFC.
