She is a member of the parliamentary sectoral committee on social services; served on the select committee that considered the Termination of Pregnancy Bill and is a member of the select committee reviewing the list of public holidays with a view to including May 26 (Independence Day), May 5 (Indian Arrival Day).

She has an interest in legislation dealing with the alleviation of poverty which is driven by her coming from an underprivileged community, one in which poverty still abounds.

Edwards, an old girl of Freeburg Anglican and Tutorial High Schools, says she gets on well with her colleagues in the parliamentary opposition even though at times there are daggers drawn in the heat of the parliamentary debates.

Like her colleagues on both sides of the aisle whom Current Affairs has interviewed she describes the stipend parliamentarians receive as inadequate but refused to be drawn beyond that comment.

About her experience in the National Assembly, Edwards confesses to not having known what it was all about and what to expect. But she says it has been a learning experience and she learns more about it every day.

Edwards joined the PPP after listening to Cheddi Jagan's speeches and remembers vividly the fear she felt climbing the stairs at Freedom House that day in January 1963 when she went to join the party.

Five children, seventeen grandchildren and nine great grandchildren later, she has no regrets joining the PPP, even though it will never be the same party "without Cheddi."

"The PNC wouldn't have been marching against the PPP if Cheddi was alive. People had great respect for him!"

All her children save the two who are abroad, are members of the PPP and together with the people at Freedom House "are her family." Her membership of the PPP has estranged her from her relatives.

"Janet Jagan remembers her birthday and gives her a gift every year. If I am out of the country she sends it to my home." Also she says, "Janet has always been there for myself and family."

She recalls fondly Cheddi Jagan coming to enquire for her if he did not see her at Freedom House for more than a week and enquiring of her every time he saw her about "how things are going in Lodge." Though Edwards was born in Wortmanville she has always lived in Lodge.

Edwards recalled that when she received the call at 1 am that March day informing her that Cheddi, who with his wife Janet are her heroes, was dead "I thought my life was over."

For more than twenty years of her membership of the PPP, Edwards has been the secretary of the party's Central Georgetown group and is now its financial secretary. She has been a member of its central committee since 1994, a member of its Progressive Youth Organisation, which she joined after joining the party, as well as its Women's Progressive Organisation (WPO), the women's arm of the PPP. In addition Edwards attended Accabre Collge where she took a course in Political Theory.

She has represented the WPO at "Women of the World" conferences in the then Soviet Union, Chile, the then East Germany and Czechoslovakia.

Edwards remembers working with stalwarts of her party such as the late "Boysie Ramkarran" whom she described as a very nice man, the late Cedric Nunes, "who was my minister when I taught at Madhia Government School from 1962-65, the only period she has lived outside of Georgetown, the late Gladstone Wilson nicknamed the "Admiral" on one of whose boats she worked during the 80-day strike in 1963, and former chairman of the Public Service Commission Brindley Benn.

Edwards is a member of the Guyana Relief Committee and has been a director of the Guyana Oil Company since 1993.