Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad Bis­esesar is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to en­gage all stake­hold­ers and the Op­po­si­tion to form a unit­ed front to fight Covid-19. The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from the Op­po­si­tion Leader:

Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not breathe to­day be­cause of the fail­ure of the Kei­th Row­ley Gov­ern­ment.

196 fam­i­lies and count­ing have lost loved ones be­cause of ab­ject mis­man­age­ment.

When the Covid num­bers were at min­i­mum lev­els the Gov­ern­ment was prais­ing it­self and pat­ting it­self on the back.

Now, as the Covid cri­sis con­tin­ues to plague Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Gov­ern­ment is re­fus­ing to ac­cept blame for the dark­ness that has de­scend­ed.

Kei­th Row­ley is re­spon­si­ble for the may­hem of to­day.

Vac­ci­na­tion is the on­ly way out of this pan­dem­ic.

Trinidad and To­ba­go, your Gov­ern­ment FAILED to act swift­ly to pro­cure vac­cines.

The Gov­ern­ment failed to re­quest a gift of vac­cines from the In­di­an Gov­ern­ment as oth­er na­tions in the Caribbean did. Row­ley did so on­ly af­ter be­ing pres­sured.

His claim of wait­ing for WHO to ap­prove As­traZeneca vac­cines makes no sense, as we glad­ly ac­cept­ed a do­na­tion of 2000 vac­cines from Bar­ba­dos.

Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley had the fore­sight to get in line first for vac­cines and wrote to the In­di­an Prime min­is­ter in Jan­u­ary this year to en­sure her peo­ple are vac­ci­nat­ed – be­fore any WHO ap­proval.

She did not wait around for hand­outs. She took a proac­tive role as a true leader should.

The Row­ley Gov­ern­ment fur­ther failed to swift­ly pur­chase vac­cines from Pfiz­er ear­li­er this year when an of­fer of 351,000 vac­cines was put on the ta­ble for US$8.4 mil­lion.

Gov­ern­ment went cap in hand to the pri­vate sec­tor and when Ansa McAl of­fered to foot the bill and pay for the en­tire Pfiz­er batch in ex­change for a tax con­ces­sion – the Gov­ern­ment re­fused.

It is baf­fling that Row­ley is now say­ing Pfiz­er vac­cines were not avail­able for pur­chase.

Did the Gov­ern­ment refuse to buy vac­cines for the pop­u­la­tion be­cause it was wait­ing for 100,000 vac­cines from Chi­na?

Our cit­i­zens would not be dy­ing to­day and our hos­pi­tals would not be run­ning out of space had the Gov­ern­ment put the peo­ple first and bought the vac­cines.

It is un­con­scionable that mil­lions are spent on rent and con­tracts for fam­i­lies but there is a Scrooge men­tal­i­ty when it comes to buy­ing vac­cines for our peo­ple.

Over a year in­to the pan­dem­ic the Prime Min­is­ter is now look­ing to gift the peo­ple ba­nana, sweet pota­toes, dasheen and squash when ac­tion should have been tak­en ear­ly to pro­cure vac­cines.

The great­est gift is one of a vac­cine.

Row­ley keeps us­ing the false nar­ra­tive that small na­tions are un­able to ob­tain vac­cines. That is a lie.

Bar­ba­dos, with a pop­u­la­tion of 287,000, have giv­en 75,300 jabs to its pop­u­la­tion to date.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so lied when he said vac­cines are not avail­able for pur­chase and the Gov­ern­ment had a “cheque in hand” to make pur­chas­es.

El Sal­vador with just over 6 mil­lion peo­ple inked a con­tract to pur­chase 4.4 mil­lion vac­cines for its peo­ple.

Just this Wednes­day, Pe­ru’s Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced plans to get 12 mil­lion ad­di­tion­al vac­cines from Pfiz­er.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley said he didn’t want to beg for vac­cines and it is clear now that he was sim­ply wait­ing for do­na­tions to be thrown our way as our peo­ple be­come ca­su­al­ties.

On top of all of this, our na­tion’s bor­ders have been closed for over a year, yet the Brazil­ian vari­ant en­tered be­cause of porous, un­manned bor­ders. An­oth­er ab­ject fail­ure of the Row­ley Gov­ern­ment.

Trinidad and To­ba­go feels like it is trapped in a petri dish with a killer virus and a self­ish leader who is ob­sessed over ba­nanas in­stead of vac­cines.

Ac­cus­ing the pop­u­la­tion of be­ing ir­re­spon­si­ble is de­flect­ing blame from poor lead­er­ship.

While we are grate­ful for vac­cines gift­ed to T&T, the re­al­i­ty is the Gov­ern­ment failed to be proac­tive in the mis­sion to vac­ci­nate.

The Gov­ern­ment mem­bers and all med­ical per­son­nel present in the press con­fer­ence to­day have been in charge of the coun­try’s Covid19 re­sponse since Feb­ru­ary 2020 and we are no bet­ter off to­day. It is time they ac­cept help from the wider so­ci­ety and stop blam­ing cit­i­zens for their fail­ure to man­age this cri­sis. We can­not con­tin­ue with the same per­sons who have made no progress since Feb­ru­ary 2020.

This is a time for hu­mil­i­ty and not a time for ar­ro­gance. The UNC and many stake­hold­ers have been try­ing to as­sist since the be­gin­ning of this cri­sis, but the Gov­ern­ment has pur­sued its own way.

At this point, we call on the Gov­ern­ment to en­gage all stake­hold­ers and the Op­po­si­tion UNC to form a unit­ed front to fight Covid19.