‘North Cyprus is not receiving fair share of Covid-19 vaccines’
NORTH Cyprus is not receiving its fair share of Covid-19 vaccines sent by the EU for the whole island, protesters claimed on Tuesday.
The Cyprus Turkish Chamber of Commerce, the Cyprus Turkish Chamber of Industry, the Cyprus Turkish Construction Contractors Association and the Cyprus Turkish Hoteliers Association gathered under the umbrella of the Economic Organisations Platform at the Metehan border checkpoint to highlight the issue.
They held placards in Turkish and English that read “European Commission do your duty”, “European Union do not turn a blind eye to this injustice”, “Is vaccination also under embargo?’ and “Discrimination in vaccine procurement is unacceptable”.
A declaration read out in Turkish and English on behalf of the platform condemned the fact that the
“fair share of vaccines provided by the EU to Cyprus for Turkish Cypriots” is not being transferred from South Cyprus. It was noted in the declaration that the EU has sent 482,965 doses of Covid-19 vaccines to Cyprus.
Based on the population ratio, more than 100,000 doses of these vaccines should have been transferred to North Cyprus, the protesters said, but it was stated that the number of jabs that have actually been provided was only 30,050, or 6.2 per cent of the total.
“Greek Cypriot officials and EU officials announce that Turkish Cypriots are EU citizens at every opportunity, but even when it’s about measures to be taken against the pandemic they seem to have forgotten about our ‘EU citizenship’,” the statement said.
“We call on EU officials and the Greek Cypriot administration to be transparent and diligent in distributing the vaccines provided to Cyprus and demand that the injustice in vaccine distribution be corrected immediately.”