There’s been an in­crease in the num­ber of Fire Ser­vice of­fi­cers tak­ing the COVID-19 vac­cines, but there’s still some re­sis­tance by prison of­fi­cers who are now be­ing of­fered free health checks on Mon­day.

This was con­firmed yes­ter­day by the heads of the Fire and Prison Ser­vices.

Yes­ter­day was the dead­line giv­en by the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­istry to Gov­ern­ment di­vi­sions for the sub­mis­sion of the num­ber of vac­ci­nat­ed and un­vac­ci­nat­ed pub­lic sec­tor work­ers and those who have med­ical/oth­er ex­emp­tions from vac­ci­na­tions.

The Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­istry sought the in­for­ma­tion in a De­cem­ber 31 memo to all di­vi­sions.

From to­day (Wednes­day) the Health Min­istry will fa­cil­i­tate the vac­ci­na­tions of pub­lic ser­vants at the Gov­ern­ment cam­pus and South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts.

The plans are part of the Gov­ern­ment’s move to­wards qua­si -pub­lic sec­tor safe zones, start­ing Jan­u­ary 17. Reg­u­la­tions on this are ex­pect­ed to be passed in Par­lia­ment next week. Pub­lic ser­vants who are un­vac­ci­nat­ed will be fur­loughed - re­main­ing to stay at home mi­nus pay. But such leave in­def­i­nite­ly can lead to job loss, Gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly warned. The Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­istry was to start yes­ter­day, get­ting a sense of the cur­rent num­bers.

Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Arnold Bris­tow said his sec­tor is still tal­ly­ing fig­ures but was ob­serv­ing an in­crease in vac­ci­nat­ed of­fi­cers. He couldn’t say by how much. In De­cem­ber ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 per cent of fire of­fi­cers were es­ti­mat­ed to have been vac­ci­nat­ed. Oth­er Fire Ser­vice of­fi­cials said the num­bers seemed to be head­ing yes­ter­day in­to the 30s but count­ing was still on­go­ing. Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion head Leo Ramkissoon didn’t re­ply yes­ter­day.

Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Den­nis Pul­chan told Guardian Me­dia as­sess­ment of fig­ures was still tak­ing place, “And we’re still get­ting a bit of re­sis­tance from of­fi­cers but we’re try­ing our best to in­crease the num­ber over the 35 per cent of prison of­fi­cers es­ti­mat­ed to be vac­ci­nat­ed.”

“To as­sist in pro­tect­ing our of­fi­cers and their fam­i­lies from COVID we are of­fer­ing vac­ci­na­tions to both of­fi­cers and their fam­i­lies at the Pris­ons Sports Club on Mon­day ( Jan 10).

“Our ini­tia­tive al­so in­cludes hav­ing doc­tors at that lo­ca­tion to give of­fi­cers health checks on their re­spec­tive sit­u­a­tions so they would know their health sta­tus be­yond vac­ci­na­tion.”

Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Cer­ron Richards said, “We’re hap­py they ac­cept­ed the POA’s rec­om­men­da­tion to give of­fi­cers health checks, but we still main­tain that fur­lough­ing peo­ple if they don’t vac­ci­nate, is forc­ing them to it.”

The T&T Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion yes­ter­day in­di­cat­ed the TTPS was do­ing a sur­vey of of­fi­cers’ vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus and TTP­SWA has its own sur­vey on why some of­fi­cers are vac­cine -shy.

There was no re­ply from act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob on TTPS fig­ures and whether it has in­creased in any way be­yond the es­ti­mat­ed 49 per cent of TTPS, that was re­vealed in De­cem­ber.

Checks with some Min­istries con­firmed that in the Tourism Min­istry on De­cem­ber 15 ap­prox­i­mate­ly 75 per cent of Min­istry staffers and Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion work­ers were vac­ci­nat­ed and there was a 90 per cent lev­el at per­for­mance spaces.

The So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry was ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 per cent vac­ci­nat­ed. The Hu­man Re­sources De­part­ment of the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fice was com­pil­ing fig­ures for the OPM which in­cludes work­ers in Nalis, Gov­ern­ment Print­ery, TTT, Na­tion­al Archives and Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices Ltd. Oth­er Min­istries in­clud­ing Ed­u­ca­tion were al­so fi­nal­is­ing fig­ures.

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s (THA) Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor had al­so is­sued a sim­i­lar cir­cu­lar as Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s seek­ing in­for­ma­tion on pub­lic ser­vants who were vac­ci­nat­ed or un­vac­ci­nat­ed. A THA of­fi­cial said yes­ter­day this was to gauge the sta­tus of THA’s work­force for the As­sem­bly to de­cide on op­er­a­tions ap­pro­pri­ate­ly.