SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Tu­na­puna, Es­mond Forde MP, launched the jin­gle for his “Sleeves Up” vac­ci­na­tion cam­paign on Sat­ur­day, at the Mass Vac­ci­na­tion site run by the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT) in Ch­agua­nas.

The jin­gle was done by singer Chris Gar­cia, who knocked so­cial me­dia for dis­cour­ag­ing peo­ple from tak­ing the COVID-19 jab.

“So­cial me­dia is some­thing else,” Gar­cia said.  “You lis­ten to so­cial me­dia too much and make wrong de­ci­sions, tell you that much.”

“When we got the yel­low fever and the po­lio vac­cines, no so­cial me­dia, the whole coun­try go­ing to take it, but be­cause of the ad­vent of so­cial me­dia, you have half the coun­try tak­ing, you have half the coun­try not tak­ing,” he ob­served.

MP Forde said the term “Sleeves Up” was coined by Mikel Camp­bell of the Tu­na­puna Youth Desk, to en­cour­age every­one to get vac­ci­nat­ed against COVID-19.  He ex­plained the cam­paign in­cludes a vac­cine ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme and shut­tle ser­vices to as­sist per­sons get­ting their vac­cines at the dri­ve through vac­ci­na­tion site, which has been set up at the St Au­gus­tine Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal.

The Tu­na­puna MP said un­der the “Sleeves Up” cam­paign, a new strat­e­gy is tried week­ly to get the mes­sage out. He said a jin­gle by Gar­cia would be broad­cast through­out his con­stituen­cy over mo­bile loud­speak­er sys­tems to get peo­ple to come out to take the jab. 

MP Forde com­mend­ed SATT and its pres­i­dent, Ra­jiv Diptee, for the As­so­ci­a­tion’s role in the vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve.