Renu­ka Singh

In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Arun Ku­mar Sahu did not com­mu­ni­cate the avail­abil­i­ty of In­dia’s 500,000 vac­cines to CARI­COM and that is why Trinidad and To­ba­go did not know it was an op­tion.

This was the word from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, as he fi­nal­ly an­swered the month-long ques­tion of who dropped the ball over T&T’s fail­ure to ac­cess In­dia’s “Vac­cine Maitri”, that coun­try’s dri­ve to do­nate vac­cines all over the world.

Row­ley re­vealed the in­for­ma­tion dur­ing his Con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter last night.

The Prime Min­is­ter, in his ca­pac­i­ty as chair­man of CARI­COM, said he spoke with all the heads of gov­ern­ments about the gen­e­sis of the 500,000 vac­cines from In­dia and they all con­firmed that there was no doc­u­men­ta­tion, but that each coun­try’s High Com­mis­sion­er was sup­posed to con­fer the bi­lat­er­al arrange­ments with re­spec­tive gov­ern­ments.

“Af­ter all this beat­ing up, I asked all my col­leagues, heads of Gov­ern­ments to the en­tire CARI­COM who was in the meet­ing, does any­body know or has any­body seen a doc­u­ment or has spo­ken to any­one in In­dia about 500,000 vac­cines. The an­swer is no,” Row­ley said.

“Not one CARI­COM head in that meet­ing could have said ‘I’ve seen an email, I’ve seen a let­ter. Not the Sec­re­tari­at, not a Prime Min­is­ter.

“Where did that come from to be­come such a pil­lar of T&T con­ver­sa­tion? It came from the CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at.”

On Feb­ru­ary 13, the CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at tweet­ed a thank you to In­dia for the fa­cil­i­ty of 500,000 vac­cines to CARI­COM. Row­ley said he still did not know the rea­son for that tweet but “the rea­son will come.”

“Yes­ter­day, in re­sponse to ques­tions to the CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at, in re­sponse to the Trinidad sto­ry and else­where about 500,000 dos­es, this is the an­swer from the Sec­re­tari­at,” he said.

Row­ley then read out a re­sponse from the Sec­re­tari­at.

“I had not re­ceived any writ­ten com­mu­ni­ca­tion on In­dia’s do­na­tion of vac­cines to the re­gion. The first I heard of it was me­dia re­ports that Do­mini­ca and Bar­ba­dos were about to re­ceive a do­na­tion,” he read.

Row­ley said that about two days lat­er, the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er in Guyana was re­port­ed in the Guyanese me­dia say­ing that the vac­cines would be made avail­able to the re­gion and that Guyana, An­tigua, St Kitts and Nevis, the coun­tries to which that com­mis­sion­er was ac­cred­it­ed, would re­ceive do­na­tions

“This ap­pears to be the source of that sto­ry,” Row­ley said.

Row­ley said that the Sec­re­tari­at in­formed him that the arrange­ments were bi­lat­er­al.

“And each High Com­mis­sion­er would be re­spon­si­ble to the coun­tries to which he or she is ac­cred­it­ed,” he said.

“We have an am­bas­sador here in Trinidad, if you are re­quired, as hap­pened in Guyana and the oth­er small is­lands to know about this, then we should know about it here and there is a path­way.”

Row­ley said the first time he heard about the vac­cine was from lo­cal doc­tors whom Sahu had spo­ken to.

“Who did not speak to the Gov­ern­ment about it,” he added.

Row­ley said the sec­ond time he heard about it was from busi­ness­men who were seek­ing to make arrange­ments to bring vac­cines in­to the coun­try.

The Prime Min­is­ter said For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne ap­proached Sahu about the vac­cine and the sub­se­quent re­ports of the avail­abil­i­ty and was told “I don’t know.”

“Well, we then com­mu­ni­cat­ed di­rect­ly to In­dia to find out if this was avail­able and if it was we are will­ing to par­tic­i­pate. I can tell you there has been no con­fir­ma­tion of any such thing from In­dia,” he said.

Row­ley said they al­so com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the sup­pli­ers and was told they could not take any more or­ders.

He said some­one was al­so of­fer­ing a US$1.8 mil­lion find­er’s fee to pro­cure the vac­cines.

Row­ley said it was al­so be­ing said that T&T did not ac­cess those vac­cines be­cause of where it was be­ing made.

“All of a sud­den it’s not that small coun­tries be­ing left out of the mar­ket and avail­abil­i­ty but it be­came an is­sue of race,” he said.

Row­ley said we are at the stage where we were told Jan­u­ary, then told to­wards the end of Feb­ru­ary, then by March 22.

“As I speak to you now, we have no con­fir­ma­tion that on March 22 we would get vac­cines,” he said.

Row­ley said ac­cord­ing to his com­mu­ni­ca­tion with WHO, T&T might be get­ting 33,000 dos­es from the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty but is still on track to get the vac­cines by the end of March.