Suva City Council enforcement teams are now able to verify market vendors COVID-19 vaccination cards on the spot.

This has been made possible through the tablets provided by the Ministry of Health and Medical Services to the council for this purpose.

According to the council’s enforcement team all vendors had so far produced genu­ine cards and all vendors had been at least vaccinated once with almost 60 per cent fully vaccinated.

After the No Jab, No Job policy was an­nounced in July by Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama, the council extended this policy to market vendors with the aim of having a safer marketplace.

Meanwhile, the tablet is connected to the Ministry of Health and Medical Services database which allows instant validation of the information present on the card.

The council believes this process is valu­able because vendors in Nausori were found to have fake vaccination cards.

This incident happened in August where vaccination cards with the Ministry of Health were sold to unvaccinated Nausori Market vendors at $35 each.

The Fiji Police Force suspects the involve­ment of ministry staff members.

The issue came to light when a woman opened up to the Nausori Town Council when vendors were told that their vaccina­tion cards would be checked against infor­mation from the Ministry of Health.

Suva vendor Unaisi Iowane from Rewa is fully vaccinated.

She said she found the ability of the Suva City Council to validate the vaccination cards convenient.

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