Shawdesh Desk:

Bangladesh Nationalist Party on Sunday alleged that the government had politicised the mass vaccination programme by deceiving the common people.

‘Our standing committee thinks the government has indulged in mass deception in the name of mass vaccination without collecting enough vaccine doses. The mass vaccination campaign has become a drive to spread mass infection due to extreme mismanagement and politicisation,’ said BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir.

Fakhrul came up with the remarks while unveiling the decisions of a virtual meeting of BNP standing committee at a press conference at the party chairperson’s Gulshan office. The meeting was held on Saturday evening.

He said their party policymakers urged the government to take effective measures to ensure general vaccination coming out of the process of ‘politicisation’. ‘We strongly condemn and protest the involvement of ruling party workers in the mass vaccination programme.’

The BNP leader said the government has started deceiving people in the name of a mass vaccination drive with inadequate jabs. ‘They (govt) have received 1.60 vaccine doses. But 26 crore jabs are needed to inoculate 70 percent of the population.’

He said the government had first announced to provide one crore doses of vaccines in the first week of the mass vaccination, but it later changed the decision and planned to inoculate 35 lakh people in six days. ‘The government’s every step regarding the vaccination has manifested how it has failed in ensuring vaccines for the country’s people.’

The BNP leader again called upon the government to present a specific roadmap on vaccine collection and distribution.

On Saturday, the government kicked off another phase of its mass vaccination drive aimed at inoculating 35 lakh people in six days. The vaccine jabs are being administered simultaneously in 4,600 unions, 1,054 municipality areas and 433 wards of the city corporations.

Fakhrul said their standing committee meeting highlighted the issue of vaccine production in the country in order to provide people with vaccines in the shortest possible time by maintaining international standards.

The BNP leader said the ministers’ contradictory remarks on the vaccination and withdrawal of a statement on not allowing unvaccinated people on the streets by the Liberation War Affairs Minister have clearly exposed the government’s lack of coordination and irresponsibility.

He voiced concern over the slowdown in the country’s economic growth, increase in poverty and hike in the prices of essential commodities amid the Covid pandemic.

Fakhrul said the number of poor and unemployed people has increased in the country due to the lack of proper steps of the government to handle the Covid situation. ‘But the ruling party men have established a reign of plundering by resorting to corruption.’

He urged the government to take realistic and effective steps immediately in consultation with the country’s leading economists to keep the economy afloat.