Te Pāti Māori have been advised by contacts in Tāmaki Makaurau that their ability to provide vaccinations at full capacity has been halved over the last four days, despite the government’s claims it is doing more to improve Māori vaccination rates.

“Te Whānau o Waipareira Trust in West Auckland were administering 3000 vaccinations per day over the last few weeks and recently their appointment slots have been slashed. Today only 1000 appointment slots were available to Te Whānau o Waipareira Trusts’ 2 vaccination centres” says co-leader Rawiri Waititi.

“We have now come to understand that the government has total control over the vaccination booking system, not our organisations. And so the government gets to determine how many people will be vaccinated at each vaccination centre on any given day. This means today, West Auckland can only vaccinate 1000 people when it has the capacity to vaccinate 3000.

“This raises other issues around data sovereignty and our Māori providers ability to access data to better support our people” says Rawiri Waititi.

“We watch the government preach the importance of getting vaccinated. They tell us how much more resource they are investing into a Māori vaccination plan, and yet they cut our providers at the knees by reducing the number of vaccinations they can provide. It makes no sense” says co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.

“How can we even attempt to bridge the vaccination gap for Māori people, when we have a government actively undermining access and putting barriers in place. Māori rights to equity and equality of access to life saving medicines are being sabotaged everywhere, from the opposition and government” says Ngarewa-Packer.

“It stinks of something that the government isn’t telling us about. Is our country running out of vaccinations? And why have appointment slots been halved? In Auckland of all places” says Rawiri Waititi.

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