Port Loyola Residents Receive Small Business Grants

Medium, small and micro enterprises are the backbone of the local economy. It’s a concept that is not lost on Port Loyola Area Representative, Gilroy Usher.  As a businessman himself, the junior minister also understands and believes in the financial empowerment of the people who live in his constituency. On Tuesday, he held a short ceremony to award fifty grants to various residents.

Isani Cayetano, Reporting

Since his election as Area Representative for Port Loyola, Gilroy Usher Sr. has been busy keeping his promise to constituents. During his campaign in 2020, he visited the homes and businesses of many of these residents and committed to assisting them with small grants to establish themselves within the community.

Gilroy Usher Sr.

Gilroy Usher Sr., Area Representative, Port Loyola

“I assured the people when I was campaigning that if they give me the opportunity to serve as their area representative, I would assist each small business in the community with a grant of five hundred dollars.  In this case today, what we’ve done instead of giving the cash, we’ve given vouchers for items from different stores so as to help ensure that the funds are actually used to promote the small businesses.”

Isani Cayetano

“How was the selection process for this made?”

Gilroy Usher

“Well what happened is that I have been assisting persons with small business for quite some time. This is a total of a hundred and ten, I normally do like ten or fifteen, but it has no political influence in the sense that I campaigned to represent all the residents of Port Loyola and in giving out these small business grants, I have kept to that promise.”

During a small handing over ceremony at Independence Hall, fifty residents received certificates in the amount of five hundred dollars that they can redeem at certain locations. The initiative, says Usher, is color blind.

Gilroy Usher

“I can confidently say that some persons that have received the grants here today and in the past, they didn’t vote for me, but that’s beside the point.  When small businesses grow, the community grows and that’s the most important thing to me.”

Isani Cayetano

“What do these businesses range from?”

Gilroy Usher

 “Well it’s across the gamut, we have food vendors, we have mechanics, and we have seamstresses.  It’s a wide range, we have a lot of grocers, all across the board, and you have tacos vendors that have their little restaurants. Some people do beverages; it’s a wide range of things across the board.”

A total of fifty-five thousand dollars has been distributed in small grants to residents of Port Loyola since Usher took office as area representative under the People’s United Party.

Isani Cayetano for News 5.