Opposition Leader calls again for covid19 inquiry

Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar
Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar

OPPOSITION Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar has reiterated her call for a commission of inquiry into the covid19 pandemic, 24 hours after the Prime Minister said certain sectors of the economy could be reopened to fully vaccinated people within one month's time.

While repeating her call for a covid19 inquiry in a statement on Saturday, Persad-Bissessar made no comment on any of Dr Rowley's statements at a news conference in Tobago on Friday.

Rowley said the green light would be given for cinemas, gyms, casinos, in-house dining in restaurants to be reopened in four weeks time to fully vaccinated customers and employees. He said the latest covid19 vaccination statistics showed 408,000 people (29.1 per cent of the population) have been fully vaccinated to date while 516,000 people (36.8 per cent of the population) have been partially vaccinated.

Of the covid19 vaccines currently being administered to the population, only the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is a single dose vaccine regime. AstraZeneca, Sinopharm and Pfizer are two dose vaccine regimes. Rowley also said from Monday, places of worship would be allowed to reopen at 25 per cent capacity and services not exceeding one hour.

However, in her a statement Persad-Bissessar said, "I continue to call for a commission of inquiry into the Government’s handling of covid19." She also reiterated her call for the resignation of Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr Roshan Parasram and other public health officials.

"August has been one of the deadliest months in our national battle with the covid19 pandemic. A total of 214 persons sadly lost their lives this past month." She said, "In the past four months alone over 1000 persons have now lost their lives to the virus, bringing the total to over 1,300 since the pandemic began."

Persad-Bissessar reiterated the UNC's allegation that Deyalsingh, Parasram, Dr Avery Hinds and Dr Maryam Abdool-Richards "are out of their depth and inspire no confidence to continue to 'manage this crisis'”. Persad-Bissessar also claimed Parasram, Hinds and Abdool-Richards were performing as a propaganda team and not as health professionals.

Persad-Bissessar claimed last February that Parasram dismissed the threat of covid19 to TT when he was questioned about it by UNC MP Dr Lackram Bodoe during a joint select committee meeting. She claimed the testimony that Parasram gave at that meeting "all turned out to be erroneous."

She also attacked certain media commentators for continuously blaming the UNC's position on covid19 while trying to deflect attention away from Government's failures to deal with the pandemic.

"Under the PNM, covid19 is not being managed, it is being stage-managed at what inevitably turns out to be full-fledged PNM platform performance, complete with gratuitous attacks on the Opposition."

Persad-Bissessar said this is being done "to the detriment of the health and well-being of the people of TT."

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"Opposition Leader calls again for covid19 inquiry"

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