While appearing before a joint parliamentary session on Friday, December 3, the Prime Minister Edouard Ngirente made a case for mandatory vaccination. He was backed by Dr. Daniel Ngamije, the Minister of Health and his counterpart of local government, Jean Marie Vianney Gatabazi during a session that aimed at updating legislators on the efforts by government to scale up Covid-19 vaccination in the country. After his presentation, MP Frank Habineza asked the premier if mandating people to access certain places to get vaccinated might not hamper their human rights. Habineza was referring to concert attendants who are mandated to present their vaccination certificate as well as the case in Rusizi district where allegedly, some residents were denied entry in the market as they had not been vaccinated. The Premier replied that it is everyone’s will to get vaccinated, just as it is the government’s duty to protect those who have been vaccinated. “It is your right not to get vaccinated, but it is not your right to spread the disease to others who have taken measures to protect themselves and are obedient to health protocols. So, that is why we won’t allow people who are not vaccinated to go into large gatherings,” he said. “We procured vaccines using government resources and other sources, administered them for free, conducted campaigns to raise awareness, so no one has the right to frustrate those efforts,” explained Ngirente, adding that the issue would be forcing people to be inoculated. On this note, Minister Gatabazi shed light on the ‘mandatory’ vaccinations, stating that some of the cases were miscommunicated, exemplifying Rusizi district where ‘none was denied entry into the market because they were not vaccinated’. “It was just a vaccination campaign taking place at the market and medics were looking for anyone at the market who did not get the jab to vaccinate them. So they asked them to get vaccinated at the entry of the market. A scuffle ensued between a few people and the youth volunteers, leading to minsconceptions that people were denied entry because they were not vaccinated,” Gatabazi recounted. He added that for the concerts, attendants are so normally many in one place where it is difficult to maintain phyisical distance and respecting other guidelines leaving them with one option of mandating vaccination.
