The draft work­place COVID vac­ci­na­tion pol­i­cy needs to be “fi­nalised, cir­cu­lat­ed, and tabled for im­ple­men­ta­tion” as a mat­ter of ur­gency, the Joint Cham­bers said yes­ter­day as it joined the call by the Trade Unions Fed­er­a­tions to have this done.

The Joint Cham­bers com­pris­es the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce TT (Am­cham T&T), the En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T, the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vice In­dus­tries, and the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion made the call in a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day.

The Joint Cham­bers yes­ter­day ex­pressed its sup­port, in prin­ci­ple, for the draft work­place COVID vac­ci­na­tion poli­cies that had been de­vel­oped by the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee, which were pre­sent­ed to the meet­ing by the Min­istry of Labour.

“The draft work­place vac­ci­na­tion pol­i­cy in­cludes pro­pos­als for the in­tro­duc­tion of ad­di­tion­al reg­u­la­tions un­der the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act. Em­ploy­ers have a du­ty of care to their em­ploy­ees, cus­tomers, and oth­er vis­i­tors un­der the OSH Act.

It is there­fore im­per­a­tive that em­ploy­ers are giv­en clear guid­ance about any spe­cif­ic vac­ci­na­tion re­quire­ments that they could rea­son­ably be ex­pect­ed to im­ple­ment, in re­sponse to the spe­cif­ic lev­el of risk that ex­ists in their fa­cil­i­ties,” the Joint Cham­bers stat­ed.

The Joint Cham­bers yes­ter­day de­scribed as “ex­treme­ly en­cour­ag­ing news” the sharp in­crease in the num­ber of peo­ple be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed in re­sponse to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s an­nounce­ment of the in­tro­duc­tion of safe zones.

“In the stake­hold­er meet­ing chaired by the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning yes­ter­day, the Joint Cham­bers again ex­pressed our strong sup­port for the safe zone con­cept and com­mit­ted to work­ing close­ly with the Gov­ern­ment and oth­er stake­hold­ers to suc­cess­ful­ly im­ple­ment this plan.

“As ac­knowl­edged by all par­ties, there are still de­tails of the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the safe zone plans, and the as­so­ci­at­ed em­ploy­ment is­sues, that need to be ful­ly re­solved,” the re­lease stat­ed.

The Joint Cham­bers says it is com­mit­ted to work­ing with all stake­hold­ers to make this a re­al­i­ty.

“The Joint Cham­bers re­it­er­ates their strong and con­tin­ued sup­port for vac­ci­na­tions as the on­ly cur­rent­ly avail­able method to get us out of the COVID pan­dem­ic with­out the con­tin­ued lock­downs, that have been so dam­ag­ing to the econ­o­my, so­ci­ety and men­tal health,” it stat­ed.