GAIL ALEXAN­DER

Tele­vi­sion show host Ian Al­leyne, for­mer UNC MP Bhoe Tewarie, for­mer UNC ac­tivist De­vant Ma­haraj and Pun­dit Satyanand Ma­haraj are among those sup­port­ing Gov­ern­ment’s plan for state sec­tor safe zones and for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers to vac­ci­nate.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced the plan to start in mid-Jan­u­ary. Those un­vac­ci­nat­ed then will re­main at home mi­nus pay.

Of­ten out­spo­ken against Gov­ern­ment, Al­leyne ad­mit­ted it was very un­usu­al for him to say he agrees with Row­ley. He added he didn’t sup­port the PNM’s gov­er­nance style nor was a Row­ley fan.

“But for the first time I agreed with what he said that Gov­ern­ment work­ers must vac­ci­nate or no pay!”

Al­leyne said it is very, very un­fair that dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, poor peo­ple, the un­em­ployed, “com­mon­ers” and many oth­ers stood in long lines to get vac­ci­nat­ed to save their lives, liveli­hoods, work and busi­ness­es—but some pub­lic ser­vants who have been re­ceiv­ing full salary through­out, haven’t.

“The same way we took risks and vac­ci­nat­ed to stop COVID spread, you Gov­ern­ment work­ers with your sure salary must do it al­so,” he said.

“I was sur­prised by the un­vac­ci­nat­ed sta­tis­tics­—half the TT Po­lice Ser­vice! Yet they go af­ter store clerks, ma­sons or oth­ers. Im­mi­gra­tion—on­ly 25 per cent vac­ci­nat­ed and peo­ple com­ing in TT...Fire Ser­vices, 20 per cent and peo­ple go­ing home to fam­i­lies...now you re­alise how the thing spread­ing.”

Point­ing out T&T can­not af­ford an­oth­er shut­down which af­fects the poor and not those with guar­an­teed salaries, Al­leyne said he re­cent­ly ad­vo­cat­ed manda­to­ry vac­cines since it’s glob­al.

“The Prime Min­is­ter read the ri­ot act and he’s to­tal­ly right, “No mon­ey for them! Let every­body take your vac­cines!”

Is­sue is peo­ple dy­ing dai­ly—Tewarie

Tewarie, said, “This isn’t an is­sue of vac­ci­nat­ed and un­vac­ci­nat­ed or of hu­man rights and free­dom of choice, nor about an au­thor­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment. To treat the un­vac­ci­nat­ed as a po­lit­i­cal con­stituen­cy is to make bad de­ci­sions for the pub­lic good.”

“The is­sue is: are the num­bers of vac­ci­nat­ed suf­fi­cient giv­en the num­ber of in­fec­tions, the lethal na­ture of the Delta vari­ant, the swift­ly spread­ing Omi­cron and dou­bling of Omi­cron in­fec­tions every two days, the ex­tent of hu­man suf­fer­ing, the self-im­posed dan­ger to the un­vac­ci­nat­ed, and the threat to the vac­ci­nat­ed.”

“Look at TT’s num­bers! Up to last Sat­ur­day, 2,560 deaths—33 that day alone, 956 new cas­es that day, al­most 85,000 since March 2020.”

He added, “Ul­ti­mate­ly this is a prob­lem of man­ag­ing lives rea­son­ably, and cre­at­ing con­di­tions for peo­ple to get on with liv­ing safe­ly. Gov­ern­ment, busi­ness and so­ci­ety have to be man­aged by those re­spon­si­ble, with­in the rule of law. Al­so, in­di­vid­u­als must man­age their own life.”

“We’re in an un­prece­dent­ed sit­u­a­tion which re­quires new rules. If you want busi­ness­es as safe zones, gov­ern­ment of­fices as safe zones you can’t have a free for all. Rules must ap­ply and be en­forced. We must pay at­ten­tion to what the sci­ence states, what oth­er de­mo­c­ra­t­ic coun­tries do and cus­tomize de­ci­sions so they make sense in our cul­tur­al con­text.’’

Ma­haraj con­grat­u­lates Row­ley

De­vant Ma­haraj said in a let­ter to Row­ley yes­ter­day, “Hon Prime Min­is­ter, I wish to con­grat­u­late you on the most re­cent COVID mea­sures. Over the past years, I’ve nev­er been a sup­port­er of the PNM but that is not enough to pre­vent me from ap­plaud­ing the coura­geous mea­sures that you have tak­en in an at­tempt to keep the na­tion safe from the virus’s dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects.”

“‘The ob­ject in life is not to be on the side of the ma­jor­i­ty but to es­cape find­ing one­self in the ranks of the in­sane’—Mar­cus Au­re­lius. The re­ac­tion of UNC and some trade unions are in­sane re­gard­ing the COVID cri­sis.”

“It’s in­com­pre­hen­si­ble that per­sons who con­sume KFC with se­cret in­gre­di­ents or Co­ca Co­la with its se­cret for­mu­la now de­mand to know vac­cine com­po­nents. These grad­u­ates of the so­cial me­dia school of med­i­cine con­tin­ue plac­ing peo­ple at risk, strain­ing health care sys­tems.”

If the vac­ci­na­tion calls fails, Ma­haraj ap­pealed for Gov­ern­ment to con­sid­er mak­ing su­per­mar­kets and banks safe zones.

“These two sec­tors record­ed prof­its dur­ing the pan­dem­ic while many oth­er busi­ness­es suf­fered. Yet they are less safe than restau­rants and bars which have much more strin­gent re­quire­ments for cus­tomers and staff. Su­per­mar­kets have nom­i­nal COVID mea­sures such as hand­wash­ing and tem­per­a­ture checks out­side premis­es. But in­side it’s a free for all.’’

Pun­dit Ma­haraj, in con­grat­u­lat­ing Row­ley, said two weeks ago he’d re­quest­ed hav­ing state work­ers vac­ci­nat­ed. Ma­haraj said he ex­pect­ed push­back from the UNC, its sur­ro­gates and unions but urged Row­ley to “de­fend TT’s health de­spite the ran­cour of the coali­tion of the ir­re­spon­si­ble.”

PDP THA Health Sec­re­tary urges vac­ci­na­tions

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (PDP) Health Sec­re­tary Faith Is­rael yes­ter­day urged To­bag­o­ni­ans to get vac­ci­nat­ed . But she said the safe zone vac­ci­na­tion plan had shown Gov­ern­ment hasn’t shift­ed from its “vac­cine sham­ing” com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­e­gy.

Ex UNC MP Dr Fuad Khan said it would be dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al to de­ny the un­vac­ci­nat­ed en­try to places. Not­ing obe­si­ty is among high fac­tors that make a per­son sus­cep­ti­ble to COVID, Khan said Row­ley should in­stead con­sid­er call­ing for peo­ple with a Body Mass In­dex (BMI) over 25 to be vac­ci­nat­ed. He said the virus lives in fat cells.

Sev­er­al Op­po­si­tion sup­port­ers fired off so­cial me­dia videos crit­i­cis­ing Row­ley - us­ing late PNM leader Patrick Man­ning’s “rag­ing bull” la­bel.