The Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) is con­demn­ing Cab­i­net over the de­lay on the ap­proval of the pro­posed pan­dem­ic leave an­nounced by Labour Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus in March.

The new cat­e­gori­sa­tion of leave is for the ben­e­fit of pub­lic ser­vants with no al­ter­na­tive care for their chil­dren dur­ing the clo­sure of all schools as one of the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sions tak­en to cur­tail the spread of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the union’s chief ed­u­ca­tion and Re­search Of­fi­cer Ozzi War­wick said the length of time it was tak­ing for the spe­cial leave to be ap­proved, giv­en the grow­ing life and death sit­u­a­tion as it re­lates to virus, was in­ex­cus­able.

“That should have been fi­nalised by now. I mean we are in a pan­dem­ic. What is tak­ing so long? My un­der­stand­ing is that ‘thing’ has been be­fore Cab­i­net. Why Cab­i­net has not de­cid­ed on this pan­dem­ic leave is­sue?” War­wick ques­tioned.

Guardian Me­dia spoke with Bap­tiste-Primus via tele­phone and she con­firmed the sit­u­a­tion.

“Re­gret­tably, all cri­te­ria for pan­dem­ic leave had not yet been fi­nalised,” Bap­tiste-Primus said.

Bap­tiste-Primus said the guide­lines she tabled at a Cab­i­net meet­ing were re­ferred to the Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es Com­mit­tee, which re­quest­ed that the Na­tion­al Tri­par­tite Ad­vi­so­ry Coun­cil (NTAC) give its per­spec­tive on “two is­sues that came up.”

Al­though these two is­sues were not re­vealed by Bap­tiste-Primus, she said there were re­ferred to the NTAC and ad­dressed by the coun­cil via mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy.

“There was no need for a meet­ing, the in­for­ma­tion was sent out and NTAC’s com­ments have been sent back to the Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es Com­mit­tee,” she said.

Asked if there was now a bet­ter chance of a pro­ject­ed time­line for the leave’s fi­nal­i­sa­tion with the NTAC in­put, Bap­tiste-Primus said she still could not give any def­i­nite date.

“We should have had a Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es meet­ing on Tues­day of this week but with the sit­u­a­tion that we’re in­to for the next cou­ple days, per­haps next week if the Cab­i­net meets. But for now it is still be­fore the Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es Com­mit­tee,” Bap­tiste-Primus said.

Asked how pub­lic ser­vants and

work­ers were cop­ing with the de­lay, Bap­tiste-Primus said any con­cerns by work­ers are first raised with the con­cil­i­a­tion unit of the min­istry. How­ev­er, she said a cou­ple of peo­ple had per­son­al­ly reached out to her in­quir­ing about its sta­tus and she could not give any up­date.

“Un­less Cab­i­net ap­proves, I can’t com­ment or give any ad­vice,” she not­ed.

How­ev­er, War­wick said Cab­i­net’s fail­ure to do ap­prove the leave rais­es sev­er­al con­cerns as it per­tains to de­ci­sion mak­ing in the face of a cri­sis. He ques­tioned what was the re­al rea­son for leav­ing such a press­ing mat­ter on the shelf.

“This thing (COVID-19) is evolv­ing rapid­ly and there­fore quick de­ci­sions have to be made,” he said.

“We can take de­ci­sive de­ci­sions with re­gards to lock­ing down our bor­ders, which is nec­es­sary. But when it comes to de­ci­sions as it per­tains to work­ers, why all of a sud­den you are hear­ing all types of ex­cus­es.

“Think about it, all those oth­er mea­sures have been signed off on but the mea­sure to pro­tect work­ers no de­ci­sion has been made yet.”

He al­so raised the is­sue of em­ploy­ers in both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors tak­ing ad­van­tage of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion.

“Dur­ing this lock­down, which is be­com­ing more in­ten­si­fied, what we have found is that em­ploy­ers are try­ing to get work­ers to use their en­ti­tle­ments for this pe­ri­od and that is not right,” War­wick said.

He said when there is a lock­down and em­ploy­ees are at home, it should not be that when work­ers re­turn to work post-COVID-19, they have lost their en­ti­tled ben­e­fits.

“Work­ers should not lose their ben­e­fits as a re­sult of the pan­dem­ic. It is not some­thing they have brought up­on them­selves. So where there is a manda­to­ry lock­down, you tak­ing out of their va­ca­tion leave and sick leave and all of that? How could that be right,” War­wick said.