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Thursday, July 10, 2025

ANSA McAL to inoculate all 6,000 staffers and families

by

Rishard Khan
1594 days ago
20210227
Tatil Building, hearquarters of the ANSA McAl Group of Companies.

Tatil Building, hearquarters of the ANSA McAl Group of Companies.

Rishard Khan

One of the largest con­glom­er­ates in the coun­try, ANSA McAL has an­nounced it would of­fer COVID-19 vac­cines freely to all 6,000 of its em­ploy­ees and their im­me­di­ate fam­i­lies once vac­cines be­come avail­able, in a dri­ve themed the “ANSA McAL Vac­ci­Nat on Ini­tia­tive.”

In a re­lease on Fri­day, the com­pa­ny said it be­lieves that the pri­vate sec­tor has a part to play in sup­port of Gov­ern­ment’s mea­sures of get­ting the COVID-19 vac­cine shot in the arms of every cit­i­zen who wants it.

The com­pa­ny en­cour­aged oth­ers in the pri­vate sec­tor to fol­low suit, the na­tion would be bet­ter for it.

“If oth­er mem­bers of the pri­vate sec­tor, in turn, com­mit to do­ing the same with its own pop­u­la­tion of staff the shared bur­den of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty would mean the coun­try and re­gion will get back on its feet so much faster,” it said.

The group said it in­tends to col­lab­o­rate and part­ner with Gov­ern­ment Min­istries of Health in the ter­ri­to­ries in which it op­er­ates. This, it said, is be­cause, at the mo­ment, COVID-19 vac­cines can on­ly be pro­cured through of­fi­cial Gov­ern­ment chan­nels.

The con­glom­er­ate said if the op­por­tu­ni­ty for it to ac­quire vac­cines on its own aris­es, it would take it.

“We con­sid­er avail­abil­i­ty and up­take of vac­ci­na­tion as a pri­or­i­ty to pro­tect the wider pop­u­la­tion and as es­sen­tial to the re­cov­ery of our re­gion’s economies. There­fore, should the op­por­tu­ni­ty present it­self in the fu­ture to source WHO-ap­proved vac­cines on the open mar­ket through rep­utable phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies, then ANSA McAL will seek to do so,” it said in a sub­se­quent re­lease.

The vac­ci­na­tion of its em­ploy­ees builds up­on ANSA McAL’s on-go­ing COVID-19 pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion aware­ness cam­paign ti­tled: “A small dose of Hope.” It’s in­tend­ed to in­form and ed­u­cate the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion on the need for tak­ing the COVID-19 vac­cine and to counter “some of the mis­lead­ing sources of in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic do­main that cre­ate con­fu­sion and un­cer­tain­ty.”

“We see this as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the pri­vate sec­tor to step up and con­tribute to erad­i­cat­ing this un­prece­dent­ed pub­lic health con­ta­gion, which has had an ad­verse so­cial and eco­nom­ic im­pact on the coun­tries in the re­gion. As a home­grown re­gion­al con­glom­er­ate with a 140-year his­to­ry and com­mit­ment to serv­ing the re­gion across sec­tors, we are du­ty-bound to do our part in shar­ing the bur­den of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty with the pub­lic sec­tor, for the ben­e­fit of the Caribbean re­gion, its cit­i­zens and our com­mu­ni­ties.” the state­ment said.

Mean­while, act­ing Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Allyson West, an­nounced the Sup­port for Vul­ner­a­ble Pop­u­la­tions Af­fect­ed by Coro­n­avirus in Trinidad and To­ba­go (SU­VPAC) Pro­gramme.

The agree­ment signed with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank on Tues­day will see US$24.45 mil­lion de­ployed “in the ur­gent ex­e­cu­tion of COVID-19 man­age­ment mea­sures geared to­wards en­sur­ing min­i­mum lev­els of qual­i­ty of life for vul­ner­a­ble per­sons amid the cri­sis caused by the pan­dem­ic in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

In a re­lease, Min­is­ter West said: “This agree­ment will sup­port min­i­mum in­come for those af­fect­ed by the coro­n­avirus in the im­me­di­ate pe­ri­od and dur­ing the re­cov­ery. The agree­ment does not see Trinidad and To­ba­go tak­ing on ad­di­tion­al debt but in­stead redi­rects ex­ist­ing un­com­mit­ted loan re­sources to new and ur­gent high pri­or­i­ty pub­lic in­vest­ment ar­eas that re­quire fi­nanc­ing dur­ing this crit­i­cal pe­ri­od.”


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