Congress Terms Centre’s New Vaccine Policy As Regressive And Discriminatory
Mumbai: The Congress on Tuesday slammed the Centre for its new vaccine policy, which allows immunisation for all adults and the sale of the vaccine in private markets.
Congress leader P Chidambaram termed the new policy as regressive, while Rahul Gandhi called it discriminatory. In a tweet, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi alleged that under the new policy there was no vaccine guarantee for the weaker sections.
Also Read: India Likely To Have 200 Million Vaccines By June: Reports
“No free vaccines for 18-45 yr olds. Middlemen brought in without price controls. No vaccine guarantee for weaker sections. GOI’s Vaccine Discrimination- Not Distribution- Strategy,” he said in a tweet.
https://twitter.com/RahulGandhi/status/1384390172637335561?s=20
In a detailed note, former Union minister P Chidambaram welcomed the Centre’s decision to open vaccine for all adults, but, he said, “the devil was in detail”.
Chidambaram raised five objections to the Centre’s new vaccine policy, including no free vaccine for the poor under 45 years of age, liberalisation of vaccine price, and no funds for vaccine manufacturers to ramp up production.
“Under the modified vaccine policy, the Union government is running away from taking responsibility, overburdens the states, encourages vaccine manufacturers to profiteer, and will worsen the inequality between states as well as between poor and rich Indians. Nowhere in the world has any government left its vaccination programme to be determined by the vagaries of market forces, and for good reason,” P Chidambaram said.
However, the former union minister said that by liberalizing the pricing of vaccine, and by not fixing a price for states at the same rate as it is available to the Union Government, the Centre is paving the way to unhealthy price bidding and profiteering.
“States with limited resources will be at a considerable disadvantage. States that are already weighed down by shrinking GST revenues, lower tax devolution, reduced grants-in-aid and increased borrowing would have to bear this additional burden. Meanwhile, nobody knows where the thousands of crores of rupees collected under PM-CARES are being deployed,” he said.
Meanwhile, Congress general secretary Ajay Maken cautioned the government that when the youth come forward from May 1 for vaccination, a situation of chaos may arise.
The government on Monday announced that everyone above the age of 18 will be eligible to take a vaccine from May 1 and decided to make pricing, procurement, eligibility and administration of vaccines open and flexible.
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