MAMATA CALLS CENTRE’S VACCINATION POLICY HOLLOW, EVASION OF RESPONSIBILITY

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling the Centre’s new vaccination policy a “regrettable show of evasion of responsibility by the Centre” at the time of crisis. On Monday the Central government announced the liberalised and accelerated Phase-III strategy of Covid-19 vaccination from 1 May.

“I am informed that the Central government has announced the much-delayed universal vaccine policy on 19 April 2021, which appears to be hollow, without substance, and a regrettable show of evasion of responsibility by the central government at the time of crisis. The announcement does not address major issues like ensuring the quality, efficacy, stable flow of supply of the required number of vaccines by the manufactures and also the prices at which vaccines are to purchased by the states,” wrote Mamata in her letter to the Prime Minister.

“It is apprehended that the announced policy might lead to unscrupulous mechanisms in the market including pricing of vaccines as it appears to be based on market prices which may put the common people under huge financial burden. More importantly, the supply would become very erratic because the vaccine manufacturers are hardly prepared to scale up their production capacities to the desired levels to meet the nationwide demand. I would earnestly request you to kindly ensure a fair, transparent and credible vaccination policy addressing the issues outlined above, which would enable the people of the country to get vaccines urgently at affordable prices as per the current scale as applicable,” reads the letter.

With ANI inputs