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Saturday, March 15, 2025

Vaccination numbers rising in some sectors of public service

by

Gail Alexander
1165 days ago
20220104
Fire officer Jared George shows his immunization card after getting his COVID-19 vaccination at the  Queen’s Park Savannah, Port-of-Spain, last Thursday.

Fire officer Jared George shows his immunization card after getting his COVID-19 vaccination at the Queen’s Park Savannah, Port-of-Spain, last Thursday.

NICOLE DRAYTON

There’s been an in­crease in the num­ber of Fire Ser­vice of­fi­cers tak­ing the COVID-19 vac­cines, but there’s still some re­sis­tance by prison of­fi­cers who are now be­ing of­fered free health checks on Mon­day.

This was con­firmed yes­ter­day by the heads of the Fire and Prison Ser­vices.

Yes­ter­day was the dead­line giv­en by the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­istry to Gov­ern­ment di­vi­sions for the sub­mis­sion of the num­ber of vac­ci­nat­ed and un­vac­ci­nat­ed pub­lic sec­tor work­ers and those who have med­ical/oth­er ex­emp­tions from vac­ci­na­tions.

The Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­istry sought the in­for­ma­tion in a De­cem­ber 31 memo to all di­vi­sions.

From to­day (Wednes­day) the Health Min­istry will fa­cil­i­tate the vac­ci­na­tions of pub­lic ser­vants at the Gov­ern­ment cam­pus and South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts.

The plans are part of the Gov­ern­ment’s move to­wards qua­si -pub­lic sec­tor safe zones, start­ing Jan­u­ary 17. Reg­u­la­tions on this are ex­pect­ed to be passed in Par­lia­ment next week. Pub­lic ser­vants who are un­vac­ci­nat­ed will be fur­loughed - re­main­ing to stay at home mi­nus pay. But such leave in­def­i­nite­ly can lead to job loss, Gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly warned. The Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­istry was to start yes­ter­day, get­ting a sense of the cur­rent num­bers.

Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Arnold Bris­tow said his sec­tor is still tal­ly­ing fig­ures but was ob­serv­ing an in­crease in vac­ci­nat­ed of­fi­cers. He couldn’t say by how much. In De­cem­ber ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 per cent of fire of­fi­cers were es­ti­mat­ed to have been vac­ci­nat­ed. Oth­er Fire Ser­vice of­fi­cials said the num­bers seemed to be head­ing yes­ter­day in­to the 30s but count­ing was still on­go­ing. Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion head Leo Ramkissoon didn’t re­ply yes­ter­day.

Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Den­nis Pul­chan told Guardian Me­dia as­sess­ment of fig­ures was still tak­ing place, “And we’re still get­ting a bit of re­sis­tance from of­fi­cers but we’re try­ing our best to in­crease the num­ber over the 35 per cent of prison of­fi­cers es­ti­mat­ed to be vac­ci­nat­ed.”

“To as­sist in pro­tect­ing our of­fi­cers and their fam­i­lies from COVID we are of­fer­ing vac­ci­na­tions to both of­fi­cers and their fam­i­lies at the Pris­ons Sports Club on Mon­day ( Jan 10).

“Our ini­tia­tive al­so in­cludes hav­ing doc­tors at that lo­ca­tion to give of­fi­cers health checks on their re­spec­tive sit­u­a­tions so they would know their health sta­tus be­yond vac­ci­na­tion.”

Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Cer­ron Richards said, “We’re hap­py they ac­cept­ed the POA’s rec­om­men­da­tion to give of­fi­cers health checks, but we still main­tain that fur­lough­ing peo­ple if they don’t vac­ci­nate, is forc­ing them to it.”

The T&T Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion yes­ter­day in­di­cat­ed the TTPS was do­ing a sur­vey of of­fi­cers’ vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus and TTP­SWA has its own sur­vey on why some of­fi­cers are vac­cine -shy.

There was no re­ply from act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob on TTPS fig­ures and whether it has in­creased in any way be­yond the es­ti­mat­ed 49 per cent of TTPS, that was re­vealed in De­cem­ber.

Checks with some Min­istries con­firmed that in the Tourism Min­istry on De­cem­ber 15 ap­prox­i­mate­ly 75 per cent of Min­istry staffers and Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion work­ers were vac­ci­nat­ed and there was a 90 per cent lev­el at per­for­mance spaces.

The So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry was ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 per cent vac­ci­nat­ed. The Hu­man Re­sources De­part­ment of the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fice was com­pil­ing fig­ures for the OPM which in­cludes work­ers in Nalis, Gov­ern­ment Print­ery, TTT, Na­tion­al Archives and Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices Ltd. Oth­er Min­istries in­clud­ing Ed­u­ca­tion were al­so fi­nal­is­ing fig­ures.

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s (THA) Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor had al­so is­sued a sim­i­lar cir­cu­lar as Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s seek­ing in­for­ma­tion on pub­lic ser­vants who were vac­ci­nat­ed or un­vac­ci­nat­ed. A THA of­fi­cial said yes­ter­day this was to gauge the sta­tus of THA’s work­force for the As­sem­bly to de­cide on op­er­a­tions ap­pro­pri­ate­ly.


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