Vaccine registration needed for all university students

EditorialProthom Alo illustration

At last there is some good news regarding the coronavirus vaccine after a long period of uncertainty. The government has restarted the vaccination drive from 1 July. Already 2 million doses of Sinopharm vaccine and 2.5 million doses of Moderna vaccine have arrived.

Registration for the vaccine has already started. In this case, expatriate workers and students will get priority. Immigrant workers need to be vaccinated on an emergency basis. Otherwise, they will not be able to go to their workplaces abroad.

Education minister Dipu Moni said when the decision was taken to reopen the educational institutions in March that the students would go to their classes after getting vaccinated to curb the chances of contracting coronavirus. The government has made the national identity cards (NID) mandatory for vaccine registration. However, many of the students do not have the NID.

In these circumstances, we welcome the initiatives taken by the Dhaka University (DU) authorities to help the students get their NID cards. Earlier on Thursday, a press release from DU said NID cards will be needed to get vaccinated.

It also requested the regular students, who do not have NID card, to collect this on an urgent basis. It also asked the students to visit https://ssl.du.ac.bd/studentlogin and log in to their dashboard by using their institutional email accounts for this and submit the necessary information within 6 July.

The press release also said that a list of students would be made and sent to the Election Commission (EC) in the meantime. Students would be informed about the next steps through an email after the EC approves the list. Earlier in March too, the DU authorities started the registration process for vaccine.

However, the problems regarding the national ID cards are not only confined to DU. Other public and private universities and all the colleges under the National University should take similar steps as DU regarding this issue.

According to the law, any citizen over 18 years is eligible to get the national identity card. However, many have not collected the card due to various reasons. The is only concerned over this issue during the elections. That indicates shortcomings from both sides.

There are millions of students in the country who are over 18. We have to ensure their NIDs to get them vaccinated. The government has ensured that every senior citizen of the country would be vaccinated for no cost.

We hope that the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic would start to decline soon and the educational institutions would open in due time. But we have to make sure that none of the students remain deprived of academic activities for not having the coronavirus vaccine at that time.