History has afforded us a considerable body of knowledge to the effect that, over time, systems put in place by governments in Guyana, ostensibly for the comfort and well-being of the citizenry, have been sufficiently poorly thought through and sufficiently ineptly executed as to cause these to become compromised, having been set upon for personal gain. It is a practice with which we in Guyana have become particularly familiar, one which, unsurprisingly, has engendered a considerable mistrust of government and one for which, all too frequently, high officials responsible for protecting the integrity of system, are not held strictly to account. Over time, the phenomenon has become a grotesque stain on our governance process.
Sooner or later the reports that had been, for some time, swirling like dried leaves in brisk gusts of wind, to the effect that the system put in place by the Ministry of Health for the distribution of ‘ID Cards’ to recipients of the COVID-19 vaccine had become seriously compromised were bound to become a matter of public concern; so that last Friday’s Stabroek News report (West Demerara Hospital driver confesses to pilfering vaccine booklets – Police) which asserts that a driver assigned to one of the Ministry of Health’s vehicles had admitted to “taking out” twelve out of a larger quantity of Ministry of Health ‘vaccine books’ created to serve as certification of persons having been properly administered with the vaccination, which he had been charged with delivering to the West Demerara Regional Hospital, would, in all likelihood, have shocked no one.
What is surprisingly, shocking, frankly, is that the arrangements associated with the delivery of the vaccine booklets appear to have been, at least in one instance, entrusted entirely to a driver. There is no evidence of substantive security ‘cover.’ This, surely, is a matter which the Minis-try of Health ought to be required to explain and for which those directly responsible ought to be held accountable.
There had been earlier rumours that functionaries within the public health system benefitting from official access to quantities of the document, the ‘blue book’ as some people describe it, had ‘gone rogue’ and were making the document available to persons (allegedly at a cost) who had not satisfied the prerequisite of having been vaccinated. There are, of course, all kinds of implications for a development of this nature and quite how it had not, it seems, become the subject of a much earlier probe is a matter on which the Minister of Health should again be required to answer.
We can only go forward on this matter if President Irfaan Ali himself makes it clear, with due haste, that the integrity of all of the arrangements associated with us doing what we can to push back the coronavirus must, of necessity, be treated as matters of the very highest national public health importance. The President simply cannot afford to neglect to engage the nation on developments that may well point to serious compromising in the continual rolling out of the procedures and treatments associated with doing what his administration can to push back the COVID-19 pandemic.
Here is, unmistakably, an instance, in which likely serious anomalies, even serious irregularities would appear to have arisen in the process. It is imperative that he address them frontally.
What will not ‘cut it’ is simply an account of the West Demerara Regional Hospital incident in which we are led to believe that the driver in question was a ‘lone wolf.’ Anyone who has followed carefully the trail of official corruption in Guyana would be aware that ‘fall guys’ and scapegoats invariably serve as escape hatches for the so-called ‘big fish.’ It defies belief that a driver in the Minister of Health would have been entrusted, on his own, with the delivery of the ‘blue cards’ without some kind of security cover or at best an airtight accountability regimen.
The ‘bottom line’ here is that in a matter that has to do, integrally, with the health and wellness of the nation, President Ali has to decide whether it is not desirable that his administration be seen to be doing the correct thing. Who knows whether doing the correct thing in this instance may not eventually become a fork in the road in our political culture.
Here it has to be said that there are no serious points to be scored across the political divide from the incumbent administration ‘coming clean’ in this manner. The well-known reality of serious even shocking irregularities in the governance process and the immunity from consequence which the privileged enjoy is not unique to any side of the political side.
The question that arises is whether the familiar practice of political posturing in matters of this nature, which, quite apart from retarding national progress has become a serious ‘drag’ on the disposition of the nation, might not perhaps, take some turn, even a slight turn here. Surely, we can at least hope.
