Chief Govt. whip alleges bid to derail booster dose

It was unfortunate that the Opposition, which carried out a disinformation drive against the vaccination programme during the first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, was now trying to discourage the public from receiving booster shots, Chief Government Whip and Highways Minister Johnston Fernando has said.

 Speaking at a ceremony to mark the opening of a new three-storeyed building complex for the Kurunegala Pradeshiya Sabaha, the Minister said that the Opposition parties wanted to see bodies pile up so that they could gain some political mileage, but the government’s successful vaccination drive had disappointed them.

  “Some members of the public fall for the Opposition’s lies, which are however short-lived. Both Sajith Premadasa and Anura Kumara Dissanayake have spoken against vaccination. They said that we had allowed the people to be used as guinea pigs. However, both Premadasa and Dissanayake too got jabbed later on. Now, they have got their men and social media activists to spread doubts and fears about the booster dose. It is such an unfortunate situation that we have got opposition members who speak against science to mislead people.

“The pandemic is a huge challenge, but President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has faced it successfully. He gave the leadership to the government to work hard to counter the threat. When they said medical oxygen was in short supply, we increased supplies. Then the opposition MPs said that people would die on hospital floors without beds, we made 20,000 new beds in a couple of weeks’ time. Sri Lanka has been recognised today as the third best country in the world where the vaccination programmes against COVID-19 are concerned.

“I spoke to regional health authorities yesterday and told them that the process of administering the booster dose should be completed in the Kurunegala District by the end of February.

 “We are not a government that goes around boasting about what we did, because we know that time spent on boasting could be used to do some more work. We have several economic challenges. We’ll address them too. We did not do politics during the past several months, but worked to help people get out of the pandemic dangers. In the next few months to come people will see the results of what we did and also realise that the opposition members lied to them. Our target is not elections because we know that when we complete our work, there is no need for a separate polls campaign to win again. People in this country are intelligent and can understand the political bankruptcy of the opposition parties and would never cast their votes for such a bankrupt lot.”