Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment has or­dered an ad­di­tion­al 60,000 H1N1 vac­cines (swine flu) which are due to ar­rive over the next few days, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has said.Speak­ing at Mon­day's Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship lo­cal gov­ern­ment cam­paign meet­ing at Pep­per Sauce Junc­tion, En­deav­our, Ch­agua­nas, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had in­struct­ed the Health Min­is­ter to in­crease the 15,000 vac­cines cur­rent­ly in stock.

News of at least six cas­es on con­firmed swine flu virus was made pub­lic by Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan on Mon­day and two deaths sus­pect­ed of be­ing linked to the virus.Speak­ing about Gov­ern­ment's new health card sys­tem, she said that would en­sure reg­is­tra­tion of all pa­tients to mon­i­tor their progress and how ac­cess to health care was be­ing pri­ori­tised. She said the sys­tem will be­gin in phar­ma­cies and drug stores and al­so ex­tend to doc­tors' of­fices.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the sys­tem would scan all pa­tients' in­for­ma­tion which would im­me­di­ate­ly be avail­able dur­ing phase one of the pro­gramme and in­volved pa­tients with chron­ic dis­eases, in­clud­ing di­a­betes.It will al­so in­clude those seek­ing dial­y­sis treat­ment; Gov­ern­ment will pay pri­vate doc­tors $900 to fa­cil­i­tate treat­ment for pa­tients. This fa­cil­i­ty will be avail­able in the next three to four months.

The PM ques­tioned the where­abouts of In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) leader Jack Warn­er's "Doc­tors on Wheels" pro­gramme which he promised dur­ing the Ch­agua­nas West elec­tion. She said a num­ber of promis­es which were be­ing made to vot­ers by ILP and oth­ers could not be kept since such promis­es could on­ly be done when a par­ty was in gov­ern­ment.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar and PP's Dr Roodal Mooni­lal both point­ed out that af­ter the Oc­to­ber 21 lo­cal gov­ern­ment polls the PP would still be the Gov­ern­ment since the up­com­ing elec­tion per­tained on­ly to cor­po­ra­tions and was not a gen­er­al elec­tion.

The PM, who wel­comed home "re­turn­ing" PP mem­bers and re­peat­ed­ly called on oth­ers to "come home...our doors are wide open, come back home."Per­sad-Bisses­sar said a wave was build­ing to­wards the PP again. She not­ed a large at­ten­dance at PP's San Fer­nan­do launch. She said Gov­ern­ment's mes­sage was get­ting through.

She said that those who had come back to the UNC/PP and said they were sor­ry for leav­ing in re­cent months, had noth­ing to be sor­ry for. In­stead, she said, Gov­ern­ment had to apol­o­gise for work­ing ex­ces­sive­ly hard to the point that the line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion had fall­en down.Say­ing that mis­take had cost PP dear­ly, the PM said those lines were be­ing re­opened. "We take the hits and keep on fight­ing...I've been bat­tered, bro­ken and fell down but I keep on fight­ing," she added.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar heaped scorn on the PNM's pro­posed THA mod­el for lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies, say­ing even PN­Mites have com­plained about the THA mod­el. She said the ILP's for­tune were "not ripen­ing" and that a vote for ILP was a vote for the PNM, since the ILP will split PP votes:

"What more proof do you need of a (PNM/ILP) con­spir­a­cy when PNM leader Kei­th Row­ley has said that 'the en­e­my of my en­e­my is my friend,' when he was talk­ing about Warn­er? Every time our votes were di­vid­ed–whether it was in NAR, ONR, UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion and with Team Uni­ty–the PNM has won," she added.The PM said Warn­er's ILP had been ex­posed as lack­ing a plan, man­i­festo and man­date, and was sim­ply fight­ing to "get back" at the PP.

She said no one man must be al­lowed to cause PP's votes to split and re­turn the PNM to of­fice. Call­ing on mem­bers not to give Warn­er pow­er to "help" the PNM win, she said Warn­er had clear­ly planned to form his own par­ty way be­fore he left UNC, since he al­ready had green T-shirts, ban­ners, flags and oth­er par­ty para­pher­na­lia in hand with­in days of leav­ing.

The PM said Gov­ern­ment's lo­cal gov­ern­ment plans in­clud­ed es­tab­lish­ment of a lo­cal gov­ern­ment Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee in the Par­lia­ment, stand­ing com­mit­tees on var­i­ous is­sues in cor­po­ra­tions and train­ing for lo­cal gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. Trans­port Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz said the new Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty would be in train by next Sep­tem­ber.