JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 3, 2025

Govt, Opposition clash over Barbados-donated vaccines

by

1595 days ago
20210219

The Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion are now fight­ing over Bar­ba­dos-do­nat­ed COVID-19 vac­cines.

The lat­est war of words be­tween Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day was over Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh’s mis­tak­en com­ments about the As­traZeneca vac­cines, sent by In­dia to Bar­ba­dos.

These were giv­en to front­line health work­ers on Wednes­day. At the func­tion, Deyals­ingh thanked In­dia for the vac­cines. He lat­er apol­o­gised stat­ing the vac­cines were ac­tu­al­ly among those gift­ed by In­dia to Bar­ba­dos who then of­fered T&T 2,000 vac­cines.

Row­ley’s Face­book page on Wednes­day night al­so thanked Bar­ba­dos. How­ev­er, Deyals­ingh was roast­ed on so­cial me­dia in­clud­ing by UNC ac­tivists.

Yes­ter­day Per­sad-Bisses­sar fol­lowed the stream yes­ter­day call­ing for Row­ley to im­me­di­ate­ly fire Deyals­ingh for in­ex­cus­able and false state­ments.

She said for T&T to “re­ly on vac­cine do­na­tions from Bar­ba­dos is a damn­ing in­dict­ment on Gov­ern­ment.”

“If we are to be­lieve the min­is­ter that he didn’t know the source of the vac­cines his own min­istry ad­min­is­tered to work­ers, he’s clear­ly in­com­pe­tent and un­fit for his job. It per­haps al­so ex­plains the sham­bol­ic man­ner in which the Row­ley regime bun­gled the re­sponse to the pan­dem­ic. At the cur­rent rate, T&T will be the last coun­try in the world to be ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said it was “puz­zling” why Gov­ern­ment didn’t ap­proach In­dia for vac­cines like Bar­ba­dos. UNC MP Rishad Seecher­an called for T&T to ob­tain vac­cines from In­dia.

Sub­se­quent­ly, Row­ley via state­ment said, “This is pure mis­chief and the usu­al dis­rup­tive be­hav­iour of a de­ranged Op­po­si­tion Leader strug­gling for rel­e­vance.”

“As all CARI­COM coun­tries are busi­ly en­gaged in po­si­tion­ing our­selves to ob­tain vac­cines from a tur­bu­lent pan­dem­ic mar­ket en­vi­ron­ment, we in T&T are care­ful to ob­tain and ac­cept vac­cines ON­LY from sources which have WHO ap­proval and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. This is for the pro­tec­tion of our pop­u­la­tion.

“It was in this sit­u­a­tion of con­stant re­gion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion that Prime Min­is­ter Mot­t­ley of Bar­ba­dos in­di­cat­ed to me (not the Min­is­ter of Health) that Bar­ba­dos was of­fered 50,000 dos­es of a vac­cine from In­dia and that she was mak­ing a gift ges­ture of 2000 of these dos­es avail­able to TT for ‘es­sen­tial per­sons’ (in­clud­ing the PM and Cab­i­net).”

Row­ley added, “I ac­cept­ed the of­fer know­ing that not all sup­pli­ers of these prod­ucts from In­dia had re­ceived WHO clear­ance. I an­tic­i­pat­ed and it did come to pass that by the time we got the items and wait­ed a while, the WHO on­ly re­cent­ly cer­ti­fied the source sup­pli­er in In­dia and thus we were able to use these vac­cines, not on the Cab­i­net, but on our front­line health care­givers.”

“Our na­tion­al pro­gram re­mains on track as we have con­tin­u­ous­ly in­formed the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion. Monies have been paid, lo­cal prepa­ra­tions have been made, or­ders and ne­go­ti­a­tions out­side of the CO­V­AX sup­ply are cur­rent­ly un­der­way and we are close to re­ceiv­ing and us­ing our an­tic­i­pat­ed sup­ply.

“Vac­cines are cur­rent­ly said to be avail­able from many sources around the world, not all of which car­ry the qual­i­ty as­sur­ance stamp of the WHO. It is up to in­di­vid­ual gov­ern­ments to de­ter­mine how they treat with the var­i­ous sources and sup­ply chains. In the case of T&T, in pro­tec­tion of our cit­i­zens, we will main­tain our pol­i­cy of work­ing with­in the CO­V­AX, WHO and PA­HO and ex­pect to re­ceive our safe quo­tas from myr­i­ad sources as soon as they be­come avail­able.

“We will ig­nore the per­sis­tent at­tempts of the ir­re­spon­si­ble Op­po­si­tion whose on­ly aim is to un­der­mine the na­tion­al ef­fort and dis­turb the peo­ple’s psy­che. Notwith­stand­ing the best ef­forts of the Op­po­si­tion Leader and her few fol­low­ers, the peo­ple can con­tin­ue to rest as­sured that their in­ter­ests are well served in the man­age­ment of this pan­dem­ic chal­lenges by a Gov­ern­ment which has been care­ful at the be­gin­ning and re­mains com­pe­tent and car­ing to the end.”


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored