I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. When it comes to service delivery, I must hand it to this government. On the other hand, I’ve said a few things before that were not overly flattering about our private sector in comparison. So, let’s not take that route again. Suffice it to say that some of the companies will notice the truth of their lackadaisical ways when they start seeing Rwandans vote with their feet. At the speed that investments are flowing in, for them it’ll be “either adapt or abort”. If the former rather than the latter, why not now? I have a few bankers, tele-co owners, hoteliers and restaurateurs in mind but, since all our companies are relatively in their infancy, let sleeping ‘cubs’ lie for now! I say all this because I dread the thought of the management of this Covid-19 pandemic, say, having been in the hands of any private company. It’d be a catastrophe unfettered in this land! Take the latest vaccine consignment of generous proportions that was flown in, when rich countries and their manufacturers seem to have eased on their Apartheid-meanness. Last Friday evening, pictures of cartons of the vaccines being off-loaded from cargo planes at the airport were all over the newswires. Anon, Saturday morning all information channels were alive calling all Kigali residents, aged 18 and above, to please report for inoculation on Monday. Designated vaccination sites were announced for each sector in the three districts of Kigali. As we talk, sanitised, social-distanced and masked residents are queuing up at these sites. In all, by the end of this round, 90% of city residents will be fully vaccinated. This will have considered the first round of shipment that covered those of 65 years and above, followed by another one for 40-year-olds and above. All of them happened equally swiftly, each time keeping their health dispensers on their feet until the batch of vaccines had been administered to the targeted group. For those concerned with the exercise, waiting for the next delivery was more tiring! The exercise has fanned out and is also ongoing in the whole country after this recent ample batch. Of course, no country on the globe has entrusted the management of Covid-19 with private hands. The whole massive process can only be handled by governments. So, I mentioned the private sector because of our envisaged pharmaceutical and vaccine products manufacturing. The manufacturer will need to have taken a leaf from government’s working methods of treating everything with utmost urgency. That’s how our government is involved in mobilising its own funds to purchase what it can afford even as the pandemic holds this economy in a stranglehold. It has also applied spirited canvassing of vaccine supply arrangement bodies as well as partners. After that, it has meant rapid transportation to this land, without forgetting equally rapid distribution to us, as individuals. And yet, in spite of the above, the government has pushed on with most of the projects already in progress. Understandably, at a much reduced pace. If you don’t agree that this is a herculean process made to look easy by busy-bee work, look at other countries regarding this pandemic. Stories abound of vaccines that were caught rotting in warehouses in some places. Or vaccines that reached their expiry date because a few months, or even weeks, were too short for their distribution! That’s a joke to us here. Because even if we were to be as many as the Chinese or were to have too many batches at a time like those rich nationalistic countries, all means like volunteer manpower, planes, helicopters, drones, say it, would be so enthusiastically deployed that the vaccines would reach those who require them many ‘moons’ before expiry. Surgical operations in whatever it does, that’s the way with this administration. Which is why, if the momentum of this latest vaccine availability prevails, we might reach the 60% targeted vaccine coverage sooner than earlier projected. Then all Rwandans can breathe easy, seeing the possibility of a future without masks and an economy with adoption of the normal rhythm of work. Alas, with the malicious mutations of this virus that are bringing deadly variants by the month, it’s hard to see light at the end of this tunnel. But take heart, country-folk, if any government can bring the virus under its foot, however powerful the government, then our government will tame it, too. I can hear choruses of “Down with these Rwandan praise-singers!” from the usual Rwanda bashers and the sceptics but as someone has said, “Those who have seen, have seen.” With the sting operations that seem to have driven Rwanda every centimetre of the way to put us where we are today, all who reside in this land have all reasons to be assured. The military string operation of Mozambique that seems to have shaken the world awake to its effectiveness is not only one of many in armed combat, like that of CAR and other countries. It is also one of many in other fields; economic, diplomatic, tourist, social, judicial, et al. The views expressed in this article are of the writer.
