To His Excellency, Lok Chumteav, Governors, Mayor of Cities,
In the immediate time, we will need to carry out large-scale vaccinations campaign, with the intervention of doctors from the national level. According to our plan, we should be providing at least 1 million doses of vaccines per month, because the vaccines either from purchasing or as assistance will arrive one after another. Therefore, we must be prepared to deliver the vaccine to the people.
In this regard, I would like to ask all provincial governors, I am not talking about Phnom Penh, to cover the accommodation of the doctors, who come from Phnom Penh, or move from one place to another, who volunteer to help provide vaccinations. Let the province be responsible for the accommodation. There are many hotels and guesthouses available. We can rely on hoteliers and innkeepers to provide our doctors with accommodation to avoid having to spend extra money on rents while the volunteer doctors are there to help people. Therefore, the national level is responsible for the budget for travel and food of the medical teams, but staying in a hotel or guesthouse is the responsibility of the provincial governors.
I understand that the people and the hotel owners where the doctors stay are not stingy on cooperation in such a humanitarian situation. Therefore, I would like to ask the adhoc commission to work out a plan for travel and food expenses. Leave this responsibility for accommodation in hotels and guesthouses to the provincial governors. I think the provincial governors will definitely fulfil this work in good cooperation with local hotel and guesthouse owners to reduce national costs, which has been the contributions of philanthropists to cover operating costs in the vaccination process. We need to move quickly and prolong no time of vaccination.
Now that (the vaccine) is here, we have to try to vaccinate one million people a month. If more vaccines come in, we can give more (than one million doses of vaccines per month). We have received information that the provinces have found suitable venues, more than 300 locations across the country, for the efforts. It is good, but finding physicians to administer inoculation matters. We must find physicians at the local level as well as those working in state hospitals. The state doctors/physicians’ helps, however, must not be affecting their treatment duties for all kinds of diseases they are working on. We only take doctors/physicians who can help with the vaccination. In addition, we need to mobilize volunteer doctors in private clinics as well as private service doctors to train to increase the number of physicians who can provide injection in the places already arranged, in addition to the interventions of the many volunteer doctors/physicians groups from the national level.
However, I would like to emphasize that the concerned (national) authorities will cover the cost of travel and food for doctors/physicians volunteered in this campaign, while the accommodation will be in the responsibility of the provincial governors/municipal mayors to find the hotels or guesthouses for them to stay comfortably while traveling to and working in each province.
My voice is a little hoarse because I exercised a little too much. There was no disease for myself. Thank you.
