Alumnus & Teachers truly make Bharda New High School proud for being responsible citizens- Since the COVID-19 vaccination process began on April 28, complaints of the CoWin website crashing and difficulty in receiving the OTP for the registration flooded the internet. Later on, even those who got registered encountered several issues of mismanagement where, after traveling long distances to reach inoculation centers they couldn’t get vaccinated because of a vaccine shortage.
Former Indian Cricket Test captain Nari Contractor, a prominent alumni of Bharda New High School and his wife failed to get the second doses of COVID-19 vaccination for the second time due to the unavailability of the vaccine in Mumbai. 88 year-old Contractor and his wife Dolly (89), who is visually impaired, were denied entry at the Cama Hospital in Mumbai as they claimed no vaccination was available.
Since this incident came to light and in order to highlight the mismanagement, inconvenience and difficulties faced by senior citizens, physically challenged, economically marginalised and digitally illiterate people, Yogeeta Vanzara a teacher with the Bharada New High School filed a Public Interest Litigation in Bombay High Court.
The PIL has been filed through her husband, advocate Rajesh Vanzara, who is also an alumni of the Bharda New High School.
In her PIL, Yogeeta Vanzara has made many constructive suggestions to improve the vaccine registration experience through the CoWIN portal and give preferential treatment for immunization to people with comorbidities in the 18-44 age category. She has requested the Honourable High Court to direct BMC to open slots for inoculation on a pre-determined date and provide information related to vaccine and slot availability for a full week instead of on a daily basis. She also said that slots should be given only when the vaccine is available at the centres.
IMPACT :
Honourable Judges of the Bombay High Court gave a very sympathetic hearing to this petition. The state informed the Bombay High Court (HC) that it was willing to publish weekly plans for Covid-19 vaccination for all districts including Mumbai provided sufficient vaccines were made available to them by the central government as suggested by our teacher Yogeeta Vanzara.
The state also assured the High Court of having fixed time for booking of vaccination slots and said “The state government will accordingly issue instructions to that effect to all districts and municipal corporations to publish vaccination session slots at a predetermined time based on the availability of stocks of vaccine to avoid inconvenience to persons.” The affidavit while informing the High Court of having a task force to oversee the facilitation of the vaccination programme in each district also said that it would direct district authorities to give priority to persons between 18 and 44 years of age with co morbidities after adequate stocks were made available.
In light of these submissions, the state and even the centre requested the court to dispose of the PIL . However on the insistence of the petitioner, the court posted a hearing of the PIL after two weeks.
Both Yogeeta and Rajesh Vanzara intend to pursue the matter relentlessly and keep highlighting the lacuna and inefficiencies in the delivery of an effective and people friendly Vaccination programme. As conscientious responsible citizens, they are commited to this noble and public service cause which truly makes us proud of this teacher lawyer couple from Bharda New High School !!!