The pros and cons of vaccination against COVID-19 has been weighed many times over the past few weeks. With several Government Ministries mandating that only fully vaccinated persons would be able to visit offices without an appointment, the topic has become the talk of the town recently.
GFF President Wayne Forde
The Guyana Football Federation (GFF) is, however, on a mission to ensure the health and safety of the fraternity by pushing the mandate of vaccination against COVID-19.
This was disclosed by GFF President Wayne Forde during the recent handing over of equipment for the restart of the Academy Training Center (ATC) Programme at the Federation’s based National Training Center at Providence, EBD.
However, President Forde has revealed that this persuasion will not be forceful.
“I must say that the GFF Executive Committee has led the way in being vaccinated, and we continue to lobby all of our members about the importance of being vaccinated,” Forde stated on Thursday last.
Expressing his hope to have the football fraternity inoculated, Forde added, “Those efforts will be intensified over the next couple of weeks and months, as we set out to ensure the entire football fraternity and all of its stakeholders are fully vaccinated.”
Forde has disclosed that coaches attending to the students of the ATC have been vaccinated in order to ensure the safety of those young players.
“We have made it a requirement that those that are working within our Academy Training Center programme…are vaccinated,” the GFF President disclosed.
However, the football boss was keen to share that the Federation is in no position to force the jab on its members.
He explained, “While we are in no position to issue any mandate in that regard, we expect that our members will behave responsibly, and that they will understand the importance of protecting the kids that will be under their care.”
In citing another reason for taking the vaccine, Forde noted that it would be integral in the restart of the game.
“So, this is a very important step in ensuring that we can get back to the pitch and we can get back to playing football,” Forde concluded.
Aside from the ‘Bounce back Tournament’ at the start of 2021, Guyana saw its last game of football back in March of 2020, just before the coronavirus pandemic hit.
At the moment, Guyana has vaccinated a total of 18.2% of its 700,000 plus population.
There are currently three different vaccines available to the general public, with Health officials implementing services such as ‘Drive through vaccination sites’ in order to encourage the population to take their jabs, in hopes of achieving herd immunity against the deadly virus.
