PESHAWAR: Religious staff who were dismissed for being “unaware of basic religious knowledge” are creating obstacles for the polio vaccination drives, a local media outlet reported on Monday.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) had hired over 900 Religious Support personnel (RSP), and 62 scholars from across the country to counter misinformation regarding polio vaccinations three years ago.
The staff, 535 of whom were from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and 125 from FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) have denied creating hurdles for the vaccination drives and blame supervisors, arguing that they would be re-hired if the number of refusal cases saw an uptick.
The 840 RSP’s were paid Rs 10,000 a month while the scholars were paid Rs 25,000 per month. Rs 253 million has been spent in countering anti-vaccination propaganda. However, many of the RSP’s, hired on the basis of references, were shown to be unqualified for the work as they possessed little knowledge of religion. Those who had recommended these rejected RSP’s were frustrated with their firings and warned their supervisors over the issue, including giving death threats. It is important to note, however, that not all rejected RSP’s chose to challenge this decision, many silently accepted and moved on.
Meanwhile, those who could not accept the decision by the administration chose to create impediments in the vaccination drives. They argue the programme actually wants a higher number of refusals.
“I was part of the programme for two years. But one day I was told that my services on charges of fake figure-marking,” said a 70-year-old RSP.
“When I pleaded that I had nothing to do with figure-marking, I was asked to tell people to refuse vaccination, in which case my supervisor would request that I be re-hired,” he added.
Basic Health Unit (BHU) Pishtakhara staff member Fazl-e-Hadi lent support to this view.
“The BHU staffers told us to turn parents away and ask them to refuse polio workers. We were told that if refusal cases went up again, they will recruit us again.”