Jearlean John: Lost generation if Government doesn't get covid19 vaccines soon

OPPOSITION Senator Jearlean John is warning of a new lost generation in five-ten years if Government fails to secure covid19vaccines urgently and reopen schools, the borders and the economy.

She said the children who have been out of school for the past year and the 49,000 children who are either without devices or connection will be “the real pandemic, five or ten years down the road.”

She said without vaccines, schools cannot be reopened and the vulnerable children will be lost forever.

John had a severe tongue-lashing for Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh, who had said Trinidad and Tobago would receive 108,800 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines this month, then announced earlier this week that the shipment may be split into two parts.

He said the first tranche of 33,600 doses will be here by the end of March and the other 67,000 sometime between April and early May.

“At the rate Deyalsingh going it will take about 14 years before TT is fully vaccinated.

“We go dead from old age before we get the vaccine,” she said on an all-female United National Congress (UNC) virtual platform marking International Women’s Day (IWD).

John linked the economy and the virus: “So no vaccines mean no iguana tail, to return to normalcy.”

She further chastised the People’s National Movement (PNM) Government for failing to seek India's to procure vaccines for its citizens.

She scoffed at local reports that the country was scheduled to receive vaccines from the African Union, pointing out the African Union was going for 50 million doses from the same Serum Institute of India “that our Government is snubbing.

“Right here on Victoria Avenue, at the Indian High Commission office, we can’t find our way there to ask, just ask, for some vaccines. I don’t know if we have a government that is so dotish they can’t even ask competently. What can they do?”

She said almost daily other Caribbean prime ministers are receiving the vaccines from India which could bring life back to the economy.

In TT, she said, the Government does not care what is happening.

All around the world, she noted, countries were looking to reopen, including Britain, where children returned to school even though a new variant of the virus had been discovered there.

“You can’t lock down forever,” she said, spelling out the hardship people, especially women, face, as they have not only lost their jobs, but statistics show they have been increasingly abused during this pandemic.

She said she was stunned by the revelation of President Paula-Mae Weekes in her IWD address that in the 36 months she has been in office, 155 women have murdered or died because of domestic abuse, violence.

“And our Prime Minister appears to be immune to this.

“Why do they (Government) want to keep us locked down? They think it is much easier to run this country locked-down.”

She said if the Government knows it cannot manage a country with free people, whose freedom is guaranteed in the preamble of the constitution, then it must go.

“We cannot continue under the circumstances to be locked down with no end in sight because the virus is here. We need the vaccine to get us out.”

John thanked Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar for the opportunity she gave to women in her party to serve.

MP’s for Tabaquite and Chaguanas East, Anita Hayes and Vandana Mohit (also the youngest mayor), were identified as the first two women serving in their respective roles. St Augustine MP Khadijah Ameen also thanked Persad-Bissessar for making her the youngest head of a regional corporation.

“As women we stand on her shoulder, because she is the one who would have opened the door for us,” John said.