Gail Alexan­der

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.”