In addition to the announced compulsory vaccination, one should set positive incentives, Rendi-Wagner is now demanding a 500 euro voucher for everyone who contributes with the third stitch. In the Ministry of Health, however, they reject it. “In the current debate about mandatory vaccinations, the focus is being placed too much on punishing,” says Rendi-Wagner. “It is important to proclaim a common vaccination goal and to rely on positive, inviting and therefore unifying incentives,” she said in a press release on Saturday. Her suggestion: A voucher of 500 euros (“red-white-red vaccination check”) to be redeemed in local businesses for everyone who contributes to a vaccination rate of 90 percent of the vaccinable population.
The vouchers should be issued to all companies that have their headquarters in Austria, are taxable in Austria and have actually paid taxes (“Starbucks should be excluded”) and those relating to the particularly affected sectors such as tourism, gastronomy, culture, or body-related services Gyms count, can be redeemed. According to SPÖ calculations, the voucher would cost around three to four billion euros gross, with the reds pointing out that the net costs would be significantly lower due to the returns from VAT and additional consumption and would roughly correspond to the costs of a two-week lockdown.
In the Ministry of Health there was little to do with the proposal: 90 percent vaccination coverage was a milestone worth striving for, but not a final, binding goal as things stand, according to the “Kronen Zeitung” (Saturday edition). A target value must exist in the long term so that there is a lasting effect. The population should also not get the impression that a vaccination requires “payment”, “since any further booster vaccinations would otherwise no longer be taken without renewed financial incentives”.
Source: Nachrichten
