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Friday, February 28, 2025

Kenson workers protest over company’s vaccination policy

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1002 days ago
20220601
Former workers of the Kenson Group protest outside the company’s office at Lady Hailes Avenue, San Fernando, yesterday.

Former workers of the Kenson Group protest outside the company’s office at Lady Hailes Avenue, San Fernando, yesterday.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

Sascha Wil­son

A group of work­ers from Ken­son Op­er­a­tional Ser­vices Ltd staged a protest on Wednes­day, claim­ing that they are now on the bread­line be­cause of their re­fusal to take COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tions.

Demon­strat­ing in front the com­pa­ny’s com­pound at La­dy Hailes Av­enue, San Fer­nan­do, they claimed that one work­er was ter­mi­nat­ed while four oth­ers were sent home with no pay.

Show­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with the work­ers, OW­TU ex­ec­u­tive trustee Ernesto Ke­sar and First Wave Move­ment leader Umar Ab­dul­lah called on the com­pa­ny to de­sist with their “il­le­gal” vac­ci­na­tion pol­i­cy.

Ter­mi­nat­ed work­er Ry­lon Bap­tiste, who was em­ployed with the com­pa­ny since 2007, claimed work­ers were told to pro­vide a med­ical doc­u­ment or re­li­gious grounds for re­fus­ing the vac­cine.

He claimed that from De­cem­ber 2021, un­vac­ci­nat­ed work­ers were barred from en­ter­ing the com­pound.

“(They) promise us they will re­lo­cate us and added to that, as well, to give us an op­tion if we want com­pen­sa­tion, we have to send a let­ter to the com­pa­ny ter­mi­nat­ing our ser­vices. They didn’t want to ter­mi­nate us. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, some of my co-work­ers, they couldn’t with­stand the test be­cause what the com­pa­ny do­ing is play­ing hunger games. Keep­ing you home for months with­out giv­ing you a salary.

How­ev­er, Bap­tiste stood his ground and at­tend­ed sev­er­al “dis­re­spect­ful meet­ings” with com­pa­ny of­fi­cials.

While he was of­fi­cial­ly fired on April 18, Bap­tiste said he had been off the job since De­cem­ber 2021.

“I want jus­tice. This com­pa­ny needs to stop this,” he said.

Mean­while, Ke­sar de­liv­ered a let­ter to the com­pa­ny, through its se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel, seek­ing a meet­ing with com­pa­ny of­fi­cials ei­ther this week or next week.

Not­ing that since May 4 Gov­ern­ment had aban­doned its manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion for pub­lic ser­vants, Ke­sar said they have re­ceived com­plaints not on­ly from Ken­son work­ers but con­tract work­ers at oth­er com­pa­nies. He called on the com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, to pub­licly pro­duce their manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion pol­i­cy.

“We are kind­ly ask­ing our cor­po­rate cit­i­zens to aban­don that back­ward, il­le­gal ap­proach to­wards deny­ing work for cit­i­zens, qual­i­fied, skilled, com­pe­tent, and ex­pe­ri­enced cit­i­zens in the in­dus­try. They have to stop that non­sense,” he added.

He said the OW­TU is pre­pared to go to the Privy Coun­cil to en­sure work­ers’ rights are not tram­pled up­on by em­ploy­ers. The com­pa­ny said it would is­sue a state­ment but none came.

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