Renu­ka Singh

“Fair and rea­son­able.”

That is how busi­ness­man and restau­ra­teur Pe­ter George yes­ter­day de­scribed his stance that all un­vac­ci­nat­ed staff must pay for and present a neg­a­tive PCR test every two weeks be­fore com­ing back out to work at any of his six restau­rants.

Fail­ure to do so they will be “left off the ros­ter”.

The de­tails of his di­rec­tive were con­tained in a pri­vate, in­ter­nal memo to staff which was leaked on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, George con­firmed that the in­ter­nal doc­u­ment was au­then­tic but said he did not ex­pect it to be made pub­lic.

“The point is that we have done every­thing that we can and the memo is quite clear,” he said.

“I am not go­ing to force any­one to get vac­cines. I re­spect their right to make that de­ci­sion un­til such time that the law de­mands, but if you choose to not be vac­ci­nat­ed, that is your right and I en­cour­age you to do so,” he said.

“But if you don’t, you would wear dou­ble-shield, all pro­vid­ed by the com­pa­ny and you would give us a PCR test every two weeks at your ex­pense,” he said.

“It is straight­for­ward and fair,” he said.

The PCR tests cost be­tween $800 and $1,400. De­spite the high cost, George de­nied it was a puni­tive mea­sure.

“No, it would be seen as re­spect­ing their pri­va­cy and their right to their body but I have to know be­cause I have hun­dreds of staff that I have to look af­ter as well,” he said.

“My re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is a safe en­vi­ron­ment for my cus­tomers,” he said.

George said the fact that the doc­u­ment was leaked is an in­di­ca­tion that some­one want­ed to “cre­ate some storm”.

“I am not try­ing to strong-arm any­one, I am try­ing to cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment that is fair,” he said.

George said that while he has been in dis­cus­sion with oth­er restau­ra­teurs, this is a per­son­al de­ci­sion that he has tak­en for his restau­rants and said it is not pol­i­cy among the es­tab­lish­ments.

“Oth­ers may do it, they may not do it,” he said.

Internal memo highlighting Trotters decision on unvaccinated staff.

DO­MA, SATT sup­port George’s ‘con­tro­ver­sial’ stance

Head of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) Gre­go­ry Aboud yes­ter­day de­scribed George’s stance as “con­tro­ver­sial” but said that he com­mend­ed his courage.

Aboud saw the leaked in­ter­nal memo and sup­port­ed George’s call for the need for mass vac­ci­na­tion.

“The po­si­tion that Mr George is tak­ing, even though I recog­nise that it is a con­tro­ver­sial de­ci­sion and even though I recog­nise that it will cause rip­ples, I do recog­nise that it is coura­geous of him to state his po­si­tion as he has done,” Aboud said.

Aboud said that there was a per­cent­age of the coun­try that re­fused to be vac­ci­nat­ed be­cause of “su­per­sti­tious rea­sons”.

“And they are plac­ing at risk, every­body else in­clud­ing those who have to pay the bills. The gen­er­al con­sen­sus in sup­port of the vac­ci­na­tion are from those who had to bear the hard­est bur­den of the shut­downs,” he said.

Aboud said that those hard­est hit were forced to come up with so­lu­tions.

“I would be the first to ad­mit that there is great dis­par­i­ty among those who are for and against the vac­cine but in the ma­jor­i­ty of cas­es, those who were against the vac­ci­na­tion have on­ly been com­ing up with threads of vague rea­sons for be­ing against the vac­cine,” he said.

Aboud said the top­ic was “di­vi­sion­ary” and said that even with­in his own fam­i­ly there are dis­agree­ments over the vac­ci­na­tion.

Aboud said that his view is based on sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence and he was in­flu­enced that some 99.4 per cent that all hos­pi­tal and In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU) ad­mis­sions in the US were un­vac­ci­nat­ed.

Aboud said that he ex­pect­ed George to face back­lash for his state­ment but warned that many are act­ing as the “cham­pi­ons of the poor but were on­ly point­ing in the di­rec­tion of con­flict while not as­sist­ing the cause of es­cap­ing COVID-19”.

While Aboud ap­plaud­ed George, he said it is the de­ci­sion for each busi­ness own­er to make for his own busi­ness.

He cit­ed sev­er­al coun­tries in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and re­gion­al­ly that have be­gun speak­ing in more ag­gres­sive terms about rules to en­force vac­ci­na­tion.

Mean­while, the head of the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, Ra­jiv Diptee yes­ter­day said he was not sur­prised by George’s stance.

“I ex­pect that soon some mea­sure of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for re­fusal to be vac­ci­nat­ed will have to be borne by those hes­i­tant at this time which is un­for­tu­nate,” Diptee said.

“The in­ten­tion is well-mean­ing in that un­vac­ci­nat­ed per­sons have a high­er in­ci­dence for trans­mis­sion of the virus as well be­ing vec­tors for spread,” he added.

“It does not match up to the na­tion­al man­date of herd im­mu­ni­ty so we ex­pect busi­ness­es that do not want to yo-yo in cy­cles of lock­down and re­open­ing to en­force strict mea­sures to pro­tect their liveli­hoods, their staff and their cus­tomers,” Diptee said.

Trotters on Maraval Road, Port-of-Spain.

Aboud takes sim­i­lar stance

Fel­low busi­ness­man Ger­ald Aboud post­ed a sim­i­lar state­ment to so­cial me­dia, stat­ing that as of Au­gust 31, no un­vac­ci­nat­ed staff mem­ber would be al­lowed in his busi­ness.

In a sub­se­quent in­ter­view, Aboud said that he would not weigh in on George’s state­ment and that his com­pa­ny would re­lease a state­ment lat­er on.

Aboud’s com­pa­ny, Star­lite Phar­ma­cy, used fi­nan­cial in­cen­tives to en­cour­age staff to be vac­ci­nat­ed.

“And we did not of­fer tem­po­rary in­cen­tives, we of­fered per­ma­nent in­cen­tives, up to five per cent per­ma­nent in­crease for any staff that gets vac­ci­nat­ed and there is a lot of hes­i­tan­cy,” he said.

“Is it cor­rect that I ask my vac­ci­nat­ed staff to mix with staff that are 75 per cent more trans­mis­si­ble?” he asked.

Aboud made spe­cif­ic men­tion of the Delta vari­ant which has not been found in the coun­try as yet but is al­ready in the re­gion.

“The mask will most like­ly not pro­tect you in close spaces. How can I rea­son­ably ask vac­ci­nat­ed staff to put them­selves at risk be­cause cer­tain staff do not want to be vac­ci­nat­ed?” he asked.

“Is that fair?” he said.

Aboud said that the ma­jor­i­ty of his staff have been vac­ci­nat­ed but he was con­cerned about the grow­ing num­ber of peo­ple re­fus­ing vac­cines.