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| Team Leader |
Our Team Leader, Rayneau Gajadhar of RG Group of Companies recently celebrated his birthday. For those of you new readers who may have
just been hearing the name Rayneau Gajadhar for this first time, we feel obliged
to give you a brief background and some of his views.
Our Team Leader
was raised in the community of Barre D’lisle where he did all his schooling
before he ventured in to the city in search of employment. Finding work was proving
to be a very difficult challenge, he did many odd
jobs, but with his drive and determination he started his own small business
– selling ice cream by Johnson’s. Along the way he moved on into different
businesses. Read http://rayneau.blogspot.com/2014/11/rayneau-construction-and-industrial-icon.html
Rayneau can remember being a
photographer taking pictures at wedding parties, doing commercials, having a repair shop to repair electronics equipment, importing televisions and
VCRs and selling them. He had a video rental shop, a wrecker service
and at one time even ran an auto mechanic and body shop. He was also into furniture and many
other things. In 1992 he got into the equipment business. There was an opportunity to buy two little bobcats from a
company. This was a company that financed equipment for another company called
Habitat. Rayneau got into renting the equipment for people in construction; and
that is how he got into construction.
During the period of CO Williams, B
& D and CCI, it was very difficult for locals to enter into construction
industry and it was always considered that the locals were not well equipped
and they did not have what it takes to get the job done.
Rayneau saw the opportunity especially
in the construction industry and grew his business from very small to where
people never thought about him. Most of his work has been in the private
sector. He did a lot of work with Cable & Wireless during the expansion
period.
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| RCIP Ltd |
Today we have RG Group of Companies
which comprises, CIE Ltd, the RG Quarry Ltd and RCIP Ltd all in a space of 23
years. Both RG Quarry and CIE have received prizes at the International Summit
for Quality Awards in 2014 and 2015 respectively.
What do the people ask of or say about
our Team Leader? At a talk show “In Touch with Jadia” the host Jadia Jn Pierre,
asked Our Team Leader, “…….How is it that you are able to invest at that rate
and to be able to take on projects of this magnitude……….?
“I will tell you what it is. St
Lucians do not appreciate St Lucians and are not proud of St Lucians. Unlike Bajans,a
St Lucian cannot go to Barbados and get a contract that easy………..St Lucians
need to start being proud of their own people and their ownselves.” Mr Gajadhar
thinks St Lucians don’t seem to support locals and he continued,…………”and this
is very wrong and this is not right and this does not auger well for any St
Lucian to develop and do better. I will not let this to stop me or slow me down”
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| Flyer about program |
Many persons are eager to know about the "Contractor Program" which Mr Gajadhar is offering. Here is how Our team leader puts it. "I am the only contractor or person who finance contractors. I do that because I want to grow small contractors. I know where I came from, I know how difficult it was and I wanted to finance contractors that are unable. Whether you get a $10,000 or $2million contract and you cannot get the finance, because the bank wants land and that kind of thing, you can come to me, I will finance you the contract......"
"You see this gentleman, he is the best, the best ever businessman in St Lucia." A young lady remarked." She went on to say, "And without him we will remain in the dark. He is better than the bank,than all governments we can think of. And Mr Rayneau, I have a message for you, stay on your own, do what you can for the people of the nation.........You are doing a very good job. Continue, God bless you."
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| Section of a community road |
And about doing good for the people, Mr Gajadhar has on more than one occasion offered to both sides of the fence financial aid to do infrastructural works to the tune of US$20m or EC$50m annually at an interest rate of 3.5%. Thus far none has taken up the offer. However his conditions are that the financing is for community roads to benefit the people. He reiterated, " I do not want to give the money and they just go and do a highway........... it is for community roads - short roads about 100m, 200m and so on......I get the gratification that I am doing something that the people benefit out from. So even if we do forty or of fifty roads ,very small roads for that money at a ridiculous 3.5% interest rate I think the people will benefit, the government will benefit, I will benefit out of it."
Many St Lucians are proud of Mr Gajadhar's work but in the wilderness there are a few critics which have no basis for their grudge.
NB: Click https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v3AwTqggvs to hear the thoughts of our Team Leader
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