Days be­fore the planned re­open­ing of safe zones, over 25 work­ers from the Roy­al Princess Casi­no staged a protest in front of their es­tab­lish­ment yes­ter­day, say­ing they will not be bul­lied in­to be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed.

The work­ers stood so­cial­ly dis­tanced with plac­ards out­side the casi­no at South Park, San Fer­nan­do.

Su­per­vi­sor Adan­na Mor­gan said dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, work­ers tried to get in con­tact with man­age­ment to get as­sis­tance fol­low­ing the shut­down of the gam­ing in­dus­try by the Gov­ern­ment.

“We had staff who did not have food to eat. They couldn’t feed their fam­i­lies, they had hol­i­day mon­ey in­side and they asked for it but they were told that they could not get it,” Mor­gan said.

She ex­plained that the man­age­ment called a meet­ing on Sep­tem­ber 30 and re­vealed that on­ly the vac­ci­nat­ed staff will be al­lowed to work at the casi­no. All un­vac­ci­nat­ed staff were man­dat­ed to take a leave of ab­sence. 

“We asked for our hol­i­day mon­ey and he say we can­not get it. When we asked for our mon­ey for the years we worked, see­ing that we can no longer be in the es­tab­lish­ment, he doesn’t want to give us that ei­ther,” Mor­gan said.

She ex­plained that work­ers did not de­serve this treat­ment.

“It have many days I fin­ish work the late shift and I have to go back to my home in Port-of-Spain but they take back our trans­port. They don’t care what hap­pened to us. I used to fin­ish the night shift and come back again for the morn­ing shift just to make sure this place is run­ning and this is the thanks we get?”

She added, “What we want is what is right­ful­ly ours. We want our hol­i­day mon­ey and the monies that are owed to us.”

If the is­sue is not rec­ti­fied, Mor­gan said they will seek le­gal ad­vice and take the mat­ter be­fore the court.

Work­er Judy Bona­parte said, “I’ve been work­ing as a deal­er for two years and six months. Half of us are sin­gle moth­ers who are rent­ing. Some of us have health rea­sons. I don’t want to take it be­cause the peo­ple who are dy­ing are ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed. I am not ready to take it. If peo­ple still dy­ing, I will not take this vac­cine.”

Health of­fi­cials have re­peat­ed­ly said that the chance of vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple con­tract­ing COVID-19 and falling grave­ly ill are sig­nif­i­cant­ly less than those who are un­vac­ci­nat­ed.

In fact, the Min­istry of Health re­vealed that the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple hos­pi­talised in se­ri­ous con­di­tion with COVID-19 are un­vac­ci­nat­ed.

First Wave move­ment head Umar Ab­dul­lah threat­ened that his or­gan­i­sa­tion will shut down op­er­a­tions at the casi­no.

“We are not go­ing to tol­er­ate this any­more. We are go­ing to go to every busi­ness in this coun­try that is in­sti­tut­ing this manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion and we will go to their doorsteps and stand firm with the work­ers,” he said.

He added, “Mr Prime Min­is­ter, I am call­ing on you to re­verse your po­si­tion as it re­lates to this is­sue of vax and un­vax. Re­verse the po­si­tion now and warn those com­pa­nies that you not sup­port­ing that idea.”

An­oth­er so­cial me­dia ac­tivist, David Welch, said the work­ers had re­quest­ed a meet­ing with man­age­ment to dis­cuss their con­cerns but this has not ma­te­ri­alised. 

Guardian Me­dia made sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact the man­ag­er of hu­man re­sources but all calls went unan­swered.