Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice and the Min­istry of Health in­tend to ad­min­is­ter a full dose of the law to those in­volved with fal­si­fy­ing im­mu­ni­sa­tion doc­u­men­ta­tion af­ter claims of fake records be­ing sold ap­pear to have some truth to them.

Short­ly af­ter the Min­istry of Health be­gan its ac­cel­er­at­ed mass vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve ear­li­er this month, ru­mours be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing that peo­ple were sell­ing fraud­u­lent im­mu­ni­sa­tion cards to those who were un­will­ing to re­ceive the jab.

Ac­cord­ing to Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice of In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Mc­Don­ald Ja­cobs, the is­sue is a high pri­or­i­ty for a team es­tab­lished with­in the Fraud Squad will pur­sue it.

He said this team will have the nec­es­sary re­sources to per­form its du­ty.

“I will be pro­vid­ing all the nec­es­sary sup­port, tech­ni­cal sup­port, that is re­quired from the oth­er var­i­ous tech­ni­cal units to as­sist the Fraud Squad in their in­ves­ti­ga­tions,” he said.

Speak­ing dur­ing Wednes­day’s Min­istry of Health vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh not­ed these al­le­ga­tions were be­ing tak­en “very se­ri­ous­ly” be­cause “it may be more than ru­mours.”

He said the min­istry re­ceived in­for­ma­tion from a whistle­blow­er and it will be sent to the po­lice. 

Members of the public wait to be attended to at the National Academy for the Performing Arts’ (NAPA) mass vaccination site in Port-of-Spain yesterday.

NICOLE DRAYTON

He said im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter hear­ing the claims the min­istry in­creased its vig­i­lance over im­mu­niza­tion cards used at vac­ci­na­tion sites; mon­i­tor­ing how they are dis­trib­uted. 

Both DCP Ja­cobs and the Min­is­ter of Health said the Forgery Act will be em­ployed to pros­e­cute the cul­prits. Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh said the penal­ties ranged from im­pris­on­ment for sev­en years up to life im­pris­on­ment. He warned that this will al­so be ap­plied to the per­son pur­chas­ing the fal­si­fied doc­u­ments.

How­ev­er, DCP Ja­cobs said the po­lice will not stop there. 

“We will be look­ing at if there were any par­ties to the crime-like who aid­ed and abet­ted, per­sons who as­sist­ed in cre­at­ing this forgery up­on doc­u­ments - they will al­so be found li­able and we will have to go fur­ther to see whether or not there is any sort of plan or con­spir­a­cy to go about car­ry­ing out such acts,” he said.

He added that if any pub­lic of­fi­cer is found to be in­volved in such an ac­tiv­i­ty, they will al­so be slapped with a charge for mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice. 

He says any­one with in­for­ma­tion on such prac­tices can con­tact the po­lice ser­vice and make a re­port. 

Guardian Me­dia was able to ob­tain two mes­sages sent to one vol­un­teer at a vac­ci­na­tion site. One per­son asked for blank im­mu­ni­sa­tion cards while the oth­er was en­quir­ing about the process to get one with­out re­ceiv­ing the jab so they could trav­el.

This prac­tice has been strong­ly con­demned by the T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion, es­pe­cial­ly if mem­bers of the med­ical fra­ter­ni­ty are in­volved.

“It is def­i­nite­ly some­thing that is un­eth­i­cal and un­scrupu­lous. It is not some­thing that we would sup­port from our mem­bers or from the fra­ter­ni­ty at large,” Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion PRO Kee­gan Bhag­gan said.

A message sent to a volunteer at a vaccination site.

Like Bhag­gan, the Phar­ma­cy Board pres­i­dent An­drew Ra­haman con­demned the prac­tice say­ing on­ly harm can come out of it.

“Peo­ple are re­al­ly risk­ing their lives and risk­ing the lives of their fam­i­ly and risk­ing the lives of their cowork­ers and every­body who they come in­to con­tact with if they ei­ther have fake vac­ci­na­tion cards or if they un­will­ing to get vac­ci­nat­ed,” he said.