Gail Alexan­der

Leg­is­la­tion for the pro­ject­ed Feb­ru­ary 17 start of the pub­lic sec­tor safe zone plan isn’t on to­mor­row’s Sen­ate agen­da and Gov­ern­ment mem­bers are mum on if the plan—which re­quires the pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion—will ac­tu­al­ly be­gin on Feb­ru­ary 17.

In De­cem­ber Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley first said the plan would have be­gun on Jan­u­ary 17.

It in­volves hav­ing the en­tire pub­lic sec­tor op­er­at­ed by vac­ci­nat­ed em­ploy­ees or those who have doc­u­ments on ex­emp­tions.

Un­vac­ci­nat­ed em­ploy­ees will be fur­loughed at home mi­nus pay.

How­ev­er, in­def­i­nite fur­lough­ing could lead to job loss.

In De­cem­ber, the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­istry called on min­istries to get in­for­ma­tion on work­ers’ vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus by the first week of Jan­u­ary.

Health agen­cies had of­fered vac­ci­na­tions at north and south lo­ca­tions. But there was push­back from unions against “forced” vac­ci­na­tion.

They ad­vised em­ploy­ees not to di­vulge their med­ical sta­tus and for the un­vac­ci­nat­ed to show up at work when the plan be­gan and seek rea­sons why they may not be al­lowed to work.

How­ev­er, on Jan­u­ary 15, Dr Row­ley an­nounced an ex­ten­sion of the dead­line for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers to iden­ti­fy their COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus­es.

He’s re­port­ed as say­ing he asked the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to take a lit­tle more time and “...I am an­nounc­ing that what we had in­tend­ed on the 17th Jan­u­ary will now be done some­where about the 17th of Feb­ru­ary.”

Row­ley said he was very pleased that from some of the re­ports re­ceived from the pub­lic sec­tor there was some im­prove­ment of vac­ci­na­tion lev­els.

At that time, vac­ci­na­tion lev­els ranged from a high of 87 per cent (For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry) to a low of 34.3 per cent (Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty) - an av­er­age of 64.6 per cent.

Nine­teen min­istries were above 50 per cent. Ed­u­ca­tion, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment were 50 per cent and less.

Row­ley al­so not­ed rec­om­men­da­tions from the pri­vate sec­tor on the law to gov­ern safe zon­ing.

The law will pro­vide for mea­sures for the pri­vate sec­tor as well as the pub­lic.

To­mor­row’s Sen­ate agen­da doesn’t have any signs of the pro­posed law for the plan. The Sen­ate’s sup­ple­men­tal agen­da per­tained to the Sum­ma­ry Courts Bill on­ly.

When the Low­er House was ad­journed last Fri­day, it was an­nounced that mem­bers would meet Fri­day on a bill to en­able a reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for poly­graph and drug test­ing and bio­met­ric iden­ti­fi­ca­tion for mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices and cer­tain of­fi­cers in the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice and Civ­il Ser­vice.

Queries on if the safe zone plan was on track for Thurs­day and if the nec­es­sary law for it was ready, were sent to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Allyson West, Low­er House leader Camille Robin­son-Reg­is. But there was no an­swer.

Nei­ther did Row­ley re­ply to queries.

Safe zone still on? —In­dars­ingh

Op­po­si­tion UNC Rudy In­dars­ingh said yes­ter­day, “The Op­po­si­tion and oth­er stake­hold­ers are await­ing word about the planned leg­is­la­tion for this safe zone plan. If it was sup­posed to start on Thurs­day as the Prime Min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed last month when he post­poned it, when will the law for this be de­bat­ed?”

“Is it that they still haven’t reached full vac­ci­na­tion lev­els for all quar­ters? Has the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al com­plet­ed all his de­lib­er­a­tions, are they mak­ing changes to this again? Or will it be post­poned a sec­ond time?”

Com­mis­sion of Pris­ons De­nis Pul­chan said yes­ter­day on­ly about 35 more of­fi­cers vac­ci­nat­ed af­ter the plan was an­nounced de­spite the ser­vice of­fer­ing doc­tors’ coun­selling.

Pris­ons which has 3,400 of­fi­cers had one of the low­est vac­ci­na­tion lev­els - 35 per cent. He said some of­fi­cers have been vac­ci­nat­ed pri­vate­ly.

“But we’re ready for when the plans start, we have Plans A and B if con­tin­gen­cies are need­ed.”

Lev­els among Fire Ser­vice of­fi­cers in­creased very slight­ly in mid-Jan­u­ary. The vac­ci­na­tion lev­els in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice was es­ti­mat­ed yes­ter­day to be around 56-57 per cent.