RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds has de­scribed the COVID-19 vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy among law en­force­ment and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel as pre­pos­ter­ous.

Hinds’ re­marks came on the heels of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment at the low lev­els of vac­ci­na­tion among mem­bers of the T&T De­fence Force, T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and T&T Prison Ser­vice, in­clud­ing its of­fi­cers and in­mates.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Hinds said law en­force­ment of­fi­cers are adults who are hope­ful­ly learned, ed­u­cat­ed and log­i­cal.

“I have looked at all of the rea­sons why peo­ple will not want to take the vac­cine, so the pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign and the pub­lic avail­abil­i­ty, I know that they will ben­e­fit from it. What­ev­er they asked for, we pro­vid­ed it and pro­vid­ed the per­son­nel in their own unit to ad­min­is­ter it,” Hinds said.

“So as far as I’m con­cerned, they big and they have sense, it has been made avail­able to you. We en­cour­age every­body in the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty as front­line op­er­a­tors and I con­sid­er it pre­pos­ter­ous (re­fer­ring to the hes­i­tan­cy).”

On pris­on­er hes­i­tan­cy, Hinds said he had gone in­to the prison and ad­dressed the fe­male pop­u­la­tion and was told af­ter his ad­dress there was ex­cite­ment and pos­i­tive­ness.

“The Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons re­port­ed to me that 40 per cent of them have de­cid­ed that they would take the vac­cine,” Hinds said.

He said he has al­so spo­ken to Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and they have agreed to go in­to the pris­ons with oth­er health pro­fes­sion­als and speak to all or most of the pris­on­ers via the pris­ons ra­dio/in­ter­com fa­cil­i­ty.

“We will ad­dress them, the pro­fes­sion­als will ad­dress them, in ef­forts to per­suade them to mak­ing use of the vac­cine that we have made avail­able for each and every sin­gle one of them. In ad­di­tion to that, we took the de­ci­sion that we would get ap­pro­pri­ate videos or au­dio record­ings and broad­cast them in the prison so that in­mates can hear that, along­side the pro­pa­gan­da and fool­ish­ness that some cit­i­zens of the world are hear­ing from per­sons who know noth­ing about the vac­cines but are rich in com­men­tary up­on it.”

Hinds said on Sat­ur­day, he spoke to Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Den­nis Pul­chan fol­low­ing the PM’s con­ver­sa­tion and Pul­chan con­firmed 700 pris­on­ers had tak­en the vac­ci­na­tion.

Chief of De­fence Staff Air Vice Mar­shall Dar­ryl Daniel mean­while said they are work­ing fever­ish­ly on ad­vis­ing their peo­ple ac­cord­ing­ly. He said the mem­ber­ship dis­played the same con­cerns of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion.

“I can’t say I’m dis­ap­point­ed but I have to con­tin­ue to do what I have to do to con­vince mem­bers of the De­fence Force.”

TTPS’ So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Gideon Dick­son said, “We know it’s not manda­to­ry right now but 43 per cent is an en­cour­ag­ing sight and with­in re­cent times more of­fi­cers have sub­mit­ted them­selves to be vac­ci­nat­ed.”

How­ev­er, he said the hes­i­tan­cy lev­els had fall­en in re­cent times. Dick­son said he was ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and has used him­self as an am­bas­sador to en­cour­age his col­leagues.

Pris­ons Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tions pres­i­dent Ceron Richards said he knows Pul­chan has a plan to en­cour­age of­fi­cers to take the vac­cine.

“Our po­si­tion is that when­ev­er there are vac­cines to be tak­en, we have en­sured that they are avail­able for pris­ons of­fi­cers who wish to take the vac­cine. We al­so note that you can­not force some­one to take the vac­cine based on the leg­is­la­tion, based on the Con­sti­tu­tion, but we, as the as­so­ci­a­tion, are al­ways ad­vo­cat­ing to en­sure that there are vac­cines avail­able for prison of­fi­cers who want to be vac­ci­nat­ed,” Richards said.

Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art said he was proud to note nurs­es are the high­est vac­ci­nat­ed among all pro­fes­sion­als, ex­cept doc­tors. How­ev­er, he said the PM should be con­cerned about oth­er is­sues, in­clud­ing bet­ter wages for nurs­es and par­i­ty of treat­ment with the health sec­tor.

Stu­art, how­ev­er, not­ed that nurs­ing per­son­nel con­tin­ue to get vac­ci­nat­ed and are do­ing a good job at sway­ing pub­lic opin­ion.

“It is a process, so al­low the process to con­tin­ue. Per­sons will come to the re­al­i­sa­tion at some point and we should just keep en­cour­ag­ing per­sons and not cast­ing as­per­sions. This is a per­son­al de­ci­sion at this time and al­low every­one to make that per­son­al de­ci­sion where they would feel com­fort­able,” he said.

In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion head, Pun­dit Lloyd Mukram Sir­joo, mean­while said re­li­gious lead­ers who were en­cour­ag­ing their flock not to take vac­cines were not un­der the IRO.

“Those who are ad­vis­ing against it are oth­er com­mu­ni­ties, oth­er re­li­gious com­mu­ni­ties. I don’t want to name them, I have an idea of some of them be­cause I’ve been hear­ing it, but as the IRO, com­pris­ing of 27 re­li­gious bod­ies in this coun­try, we all, all 27 of us, en­cour­age our fol­low­ing to get vac­ci­nat­ed be­cause we be­lieve that is the on­ly way out of this pan­dem­ic. We have to get vac­ci­nat­ed.”