Have the PM, others been vaccinated?

THE EDITOR: I am an elderly man and I very much fear that if I am not vaccinated ASAP I may contract the covid19 virus and die.

I am not yet ready to die so I personally do not care whether Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar was “out of place” to directly write India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi begging/pleading for a gift of covid19 vaccines for TT.

Having said that, I personally would have preferred that Persad-Bissessar publicly criticised the Government for being tardy in requesting vaccines from India.

It is of great interest and curiosity to note that TT has very close historic ties to India yet Barbados and Dominica received vaccine gifts months ago and TT is yet to receive a single gifted dose from India.

India recently built a multi-million-dollar cultural centre in TT – the Mahatma Gandhi Institute located in Valsayn. So how come we were left behind? I suspect it is the tardiness of the Government that, at the time of Persad-Bissessar writing her letter, no formal written request had been made by our Government for a gift of vaccines.

It is not a fact that when Persad-Bissessar wrote her letter India had already started distributing millions of its domestically produced covid19 vaccines for free to several countries around the world that had asked for them.

I return to the question: why didn’t the Rowley administration “beg,” “request,” “ask” for a gift of vaccines when India announced the concept of the “vaccine maître” (vaccine friendship) initiative days after it began its nationwide vaccination campaign in January?

Jamaica is set to receive 50,000 doses of the covid19 vaccine from India by the middle of March. And as to date, no such vaccines are due as gifts to TT because the Government was or is very tardy and lackadaisical in requesting this gift. The question we must all ask is: why?

Is it that the Prime Minister and his immediate family and other high-ranking ministers have already been vaccinated and they just don’t care about the rest of us?

Say something, Mr PM.

ISRAEL B RAJAH-KHAN

via e-mail