Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she does not sup­port manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tions, nor does she sup­port a re­turn to school for on­ly vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents.

Speak­ing dur­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ Mon­day night fo­rum Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she has ad­vised par­ents to get their chil­dren vac­ci­nat­ed but does not agree with the Gov­ern­ment’s stance to on­ly al­low vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents to at­tend phys­i­cal class­es.

Dur­ing a COVID-19 me­dia con­fer­ence last week­end, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that phys­i­cal class­es for stu­dents in Forms Four and Five would re­sume on Oc­to­ber 1 but on­ly for vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents.

On Au­gust 11, T&T re­ceived 305,370 dos­es of the Pfiz­er vac­cine from the US gov­ern­ment. The Pfiz­er vac­cine is ap­proved for ado­les­cents be­tween the ages of 12 to 18 by the US-based Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

On Mon­day night, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said on the cusp of T&T’s 59th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence, the coun­try was al­so on the cusp of a cha­rade with re­la­tion to the re­open­ing of schools.

“Are we open­ing or are we not open­ing our schools? What is the mes­sage we are send­ing to our chil­dren? You have kept our chil­dren locked down for over a year. This is the sec­ond year in lock­down. You are now threat­en­ing that if they are not vac­ci­nat­ed they can­not come to school,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She added, “I want to make it very clear that I do not sup­port manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tions.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she has called on par­ents to con­sult their doc­tors and con­sid­er tak­ing their chil­dren for the vac­cine. But she re­it­er­at­ed that she does not sup­port Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to make it manda­to­ry for chil­dren to take the vac­cine.

“Gov­ern­ment must first have a dis­cus­sion with civ­il so­ci­ety and put for­ward a pro­posed pol­i­cy so peo­ple can con­sid­er it be­fore any moves are made to man­date vac­cines for chil­dren. What is most dear to any one of us are our chil­dren, so I ask the Gov­ern­ment to think very, very care­ful­ly on this is­sue.”

She said with the “night­mare” of schools re­open­ing, the Gov­ern­ment must re­mem­ber that over 60,000 chil­dren have no ac­cess to the in­ter­net or de­vices to con­nect to on­line class­es. She slammed the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) for stop­ping her ad­min­is­tra­tion’s lap­top dis­tri­b­u­tion pro­gramme.

“You stopped the most bril­liant pro­gramme of this time, which is the lap­top pro­gramme. You put the chil­dren in­to lock­down and cut them off and then ask them to log on on­line and learn. Six­ty thou­sand chil­dren have no de­vices,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s open­ing of sev­er­al schools - in­clud­ing the Mal­abar Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry school, San Juan Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School and the Chatham Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School. She said all three were start­ed un­der her ad­min­is­tra­tion be­tween 2010 and 2015 and the mon­ey used to open them could have been bet­ter spent in strength­en­ing the vir­tu­al learn­ing plat­form.

“Why don’t you take that mon­ey and buy lap­tops for the chil­dren for the fore­see­able fu­ture? We have to learn to live with this pan­dem­ic. We are see­ing what’s hap­pen­ing in oth­er coun­tries where you have wave up­on wave,” she said.

She al­so ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of not tak­ing care of the wel­fare of the na­tion’s chil­dren.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­so ques­tioned how the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to spend an In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) dis­burse­ment of Spe­cial Draw­ing Rights. She said Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and the Prime Min­is­ter have been con­tra­dict­ing each oth­er in their state­ments about how the US$644 mil­lion will be spent. She be­lieves it will be used to plug holes in the Gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal deficit.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said in a re­cent in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Im­bert said the mon­ey will be used to give the Gov­ern­ment flex­i­bil­i­ty to in­ject US com­mer­cial dol­lars in­to the com­mer­cial bank­ing sec­tor for dis­tri­b­u­tion to the pub­lic and to make more for­eign ex­change avail­able.

“On the oth­er hand, when it comes to the Prime Min­is­ter, in an in­ter­view, he wasn’t clear what the mon­ey would be used for. They have al­ready spent $5 bil­lion by their own ad­mis­sion on COVID-19 re­lief. And now it’s about $4 bil­lion that they have got­ten from the IMF. So where has the $5 bil­lion gone? And where ex­act­ly will the $4 bil­lion go?” she asked.