Secretary General of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and former lawmaker Professor Mia Golam Porwar has issued the following statement on 13 January, 2021 urging to ensure transparency in the process of procurement, collection and distribution of corona vaccines.

The government has demonstrated its utmost failure in dealing the covid-19 pandemic situation since the beginning. The authorities have conducted massive irregularities and corruption in procuring masks and PPE. They also made corruption in distributing relief materiels and now severe inconsistencies and lack of transparencies are being exposed in the procurement process of vaccines. The news and information about the discovery of corona vaccine had appeared long time before. But why the government made a delay in taking the decision of procuring vaccines and why they are collecting these vaccines at high price now, is beyond our understanding.

According to the reports of various national dailies, the government is going to buy these vaccines from Serum Institute of India with 47 percent higher price than India. The reports stated that, India is procuring the vaccines at 2.72 dollar or 231 BDT. But from Serum, Bangladesh is going to buy same vaccines with 4 dollar or 340 BDT. In the wake of severe uncertainty in getting vaccines, the Health Ministry is trying to define a commerce deal as government to government service. Their all attempts are seemingly looks mysterious. It is not clear that why the government is trying to procure vaccines at higher price.

It is really suspicious whether the authority is not following the rules and regulations of the medicine department. They did not take any expert's view and as such they did not fix the priorities of recipients.

In generally, people are suffering due to pandemic situation and they are still in uncertainty over receiving the vaccines.

I am urging the concerned authorities to remove irregularities in vaccine procurement and also to ensure transparency in the process of management and distribution.