Chester Sam­bra­no

Some mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment have ex­pressed con­cern that they could be “forced to take the As­trazeneca COVID-19 vac­cine” athough they do not want to.

This has arisen due to a memo be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia plat­form What­sApp.

The cur­rent batch of 33,600 vac­cines be­ing used by the Gov­ern­ment was re­ceived through the Co­v­ax fa­cil­i­ty es­tab­lished by the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) and the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO).

The vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve com­menced with health­care work­ers and peo­ple over 60 years with non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases.

How­ev­er, hav­ing re­ceived a fur­ther 40,000 vac­cines as a gift from the gov­ern­ment of In­dia, lo­cal health of­fi­cials moved in­to the sec­ond phase on April 17.

This in­clud­ed front­line work­ers.

This is the brack­et in which sol­diers fall and ef­forts are be­ing made for them to be vac­ci­nat­ed. But it is the ap­par­ent ap­proach by the mil­i­tary that has some of its mem­bers con­cerned.

In a doc­u­ment ti­tled, “Com­mand Guid­ance for Ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Vac­ci­na­tion Process,” sol­diers are re­port­ed­ly giv­en in­struc­tions on what is ex­pect­ed of them.

It said sol­diers will be se­lect­ed and di­rect­ed to be vac­ci­nat­ed for COVID-19 and “Sol­diers who refuse to take the vac­cine will be placed on re­port.”

Guardian Me­dia spoke with sev­er­al sol­diers who are not per­mit­ted to speak on the record, and one, in par­tic­u­lar, ex­plained that, “once a sol­dier is placed on re­port, he is be­ing charged.”

He said once an of­fi­cer is charged, the ram­i­fi­ca­tions could range from be­ing con­fined to bar­racks, be­ing de­mot­ed or even be­ing fired.

Ac­cord­ing to the ‘memo’, an of­fi­cer who re­fus­es vac­ci­na­tion will be “in­struct­ed to state their re­fusal in writ­ing along with an ex­pla­na­tion for the re­fusal.”

But the sol­dier told Guardian Me­dia that, “a lot of of­fi­cers are hes­i­tant to take the vac­cine right now.”

He cit­ed lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports about blood clots and oth­er com­pli­ca­tions from the As­traZeneca vac­cine.

The of­fi­cer said it is im­por­tant to note that in their con­tracts, they are asked whether they are will­ing to be vac­ci­nat­ed or re-vac­ci­nat­ed, to which most sol­diers say yes.

How­ev­er, he is of the view that this par­tic­u­lar clause can­not be used in this in­stance.

The con­cerns have now spread from with­in the Reg­i­ment to the wider De­fence Force, as Coast Guard of­fi­cers who spoke with Guardian Me­dia said if the memo is true, it may on­ly be a mat­ter of time be­fore sim­i­lar or­ders spillover.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Chief of De­fence Staff Air Com­modore Dar­ryl Daniel on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions but was un­suc­cess­ful.

A What­sApp mes­sage was al­so sent to him, ask­ing to ver­i­fy or re­fute the con­tents of the doc­u­ment. The mesasage was read but there was still no re­sponse.

A phone call, fol­lowed by a What­sApp mes­sage, were al­so sent to new­ly-mint­ed Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds to get his thoughts on the mat­ter, but those too were not replied to.

In Feb­ru­ary of this year, Pres­i­dent of the In­dus­tri­al Court Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix said an em­ploy­er can­not al­ter its terms and con­di­tions and make COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion manda­to­ry for em­ploy­ees.

“It can­not be that the whole world pop­u­la­tion is forced to take an in­jec­tion, whether it is for the greater good or not for the greater good,” she said.