Vaccination drive
Many readers have mentioned in their letters their smooth experience in the COVID-19 vaccination process, especially in Chennai and Kerala. However, our attempt to get vaccinated in Bengaluru has still to materialise. We booked a slot in the forenoon, at a health centre near my house in Basavanagudi. When we went there, we found 20 people waiting and a small queue at the registration table. A staff member came over and asked us what we wanted. When we showed him the SMS we had received, his reply was that they would finish all offline registrations first and then move to online. So, why have online registrations at all? We then went to a private nursing home. There were about 10 to 12 persons there, standing around the registration table. There was no distancing in either place.
G. Padmanabhan,
Bengaluru
I am 85 and my wife 75. We walked into a corporate hospital (Annanagar) without prior registration for our vaccination on March 6. At the desk they asked for my Aadhaar card and mobile number, ₹250 for each and asked us to go up to the first floor with our token numbers. Since we could not climb the stairs, a nurse came down and vaccinated us with Covishield behind a mobile screen. We were told to wait for 30 minutes, and during this time, the hospital officials gave us the necessary certificates. No forms were filled, no medical examination was carried out and all procedures were over in 20 minutes. We have had no adverse reaction so far.
Ram Gulrajani,
Chennai
I am a senior citizen and went to a hospital (Mudichur road, Old Perungalathur), where the staff asked senior citizens whether they were under medication for any disease. If the answer was in the affirmative, we were charged ₹200 as the doctor’s consultation fees. But no consultation or check up was carried out by any doctor. Thus, the cost of going to the hospital rose to ₹450. I was vaccinated on March 6. The Health Department needs to stop some hospitals from profiteering.
G. Rajavel,
Chennai
Unwarranted sops
It has now become a practice for the leaders of the AIADMK and the DMK to indulge in counter offers in any welfare measure one of them announces — by improving it by a few hundreds in terms of money. The latest example is that of a provision of a sum per month to the woman-head of every family. I wonder whether a State that is said to have fallen into an unprecedented debt trap with unnecessary largesse should now add more to the agony of the taxpayers
Tharcius S. Fernando,
Chennai
The battle for Bengal
It is West Bengal that is most likely to see the most aggressive and furious political battle for power (Editorial, March 9). But the fact is that elections in this State have always been violent. If, in the past, it was the Left Front and the Congress and later the Trinamool Congress that unleashed violence on each other, this time around, the hostility between the TMC and the BJP has been framed in terms of ‘Bengali regionalism’ and ‘Hindu nationalism’, respectively. To put it straight, it is a fierce fight between ‘Bengali pride’ and the ‘Hindutva rhetoric.’
R. Sivakumar,
Chennai
