Mandatory vaccination: Executive Instrument should have been out - Kwaku Baako tells gov't

Seasoned Journalist, Abdul Malik Kweku Baako, has slammed the government for failing to enact an Executive Instrument (E.I) to regularize the compulsory COVID-19 vaccination directive by the Ghana Health Service(GHS).

The Ghana Health Service has reviewed the preventive protocols at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) stressing all unvaccinated persons returning to Ghana must be vaccinated on arrival and persons aged 18 or above must provide evidence of them fully vaccinated.

This new directive has courted controversies with some critics raising human rights infringement issues with it.

Member of Parliament for Ningo-Prampram, Sam George, in a Twitter post, tweeted; "Compulsory vaccination upon entry to the Republic? Infringement of rights or public health policy? This is sound public health policy and a very good step by govt. I support it and hope it is implemented vigorously. Public health considerations supersede personal liberties."

Also, NDC Chief Communicator, Sammy Gyamfi, on his Facebook, posted; "Vaccination must be by choice and not by force. The imposition of compulsory COVID vaccination requirement on all Ghanaians traveling into and out of Ghana by the Ghana Health Service is reprehensible and an affront to the 1992 Constitution. And some of us are determined to fight this madness through every available legal means no matter the cost or stigma."

Kweku Baako, on the other hand, supports the compulsory vaccination but his problem has to do with the delay in bringing out an E.I to provide legal backing for the enforcement of the directive.

Expressing his concerns on Peace FM's ''Kokrokoo'', he said, "I haven't seen any E.I. I don't understand why in putting up E.Is, sometimes it delays and when it comes out too, at times there are few discrepancies".

"It worries me because it's a very simple thing. We have people with that legal brains in the appropriate institutions . . . what I mean is that they have enough experience in drafting these things. It's elementary but it delays too much. I don't understand. By now, I think the Executive Instrument, the appropriate one, it should have been out," he added.

He called on the government to take the E.I seriously, stating, "in the absence of the Executive Instrument, we have started something. Fine, no problems because it's an emergency but please the earlier we regularize it, the better!"