Gail Alexan­der

The gov­ern­ment is not ex­am­in­ing manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tions for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers, says Labour Min­is­ter Stephen Mc­Clashie.

His com­ments yes­ter­day, came af­ter Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) MP Rudy In­dars­ingh on Wednes­day called for Gov­ern­ment to say if it is prepar­ing law or reg­u­la­tions for manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tions in the work­place.

In­dars­ingh was speak­ing in Par­lia­ment’s de­bate on a mo­tion to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency. It was passed with Gov­ern­ment votes alone as the Op­po­si­tion ab­stained from the vote.

In­dars­ingh said af­ter Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent ‘Big Stick’ hint on pos­si­ble manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion for stu­dents, “Sources told me they’re hear­ing through the grapevine Gov­ern­ment is prepar­ing leg­is­la­tion for Par­lia­ment to make vac­ci­na­tions manda­to­ry in work­places. I ask be­cause Gov­ern­ment is the largest pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ers.

But Mc­Clashie told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, “Mr In­dars­ingh’s claims aren’t true.’’

He said the is­sue of manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion car­ries a lot of le­gal and con­sti­tu­tion­al is­sues that can­not be man­dat­ed by the Gov­ern­ment and to do any manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion will re­quire a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty vote of three-fifths of the Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans.

There­fore he said Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach is to con­tin­ue with the man­date to “vac­ci­nate to op­er­ate” and how fast T&T opens up and what sec­tors do so will de­pend on the coun­try get­ting to herd im­mu­ni­ty.

Mc­Clashie es­ti­mat­ed there were rough­ly about 500,000 peo­ple with first dos­es and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300,000 odd with both dos­es and dai­ly more were get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed.

He said the ap­proach the gov­ern­ment is tak­ing with vac­ci­na­tions is to en­cour­age with a lot of ad­ver­tise­ments.

“And there’s been no pro­nounce­ment that if you don’t take it we are go­ing to make it manda­to­ry,” he said.

He added that one can­not re­move the idea that if the more high­ly trans­mis­si­ble Delta vari­ant be­comes very ram­pant and T&T starts hav­ing mul­ti­ple deaths, it’s been said that op­tion may still be open.

“But we’re not pur­su­ing that (manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion) at this point,” he said.

Mc­Clashie al­so said pro­posed guide­lines for work op­er­a­tions—to guide work­ers and em­ploy­ers­—is be­ing ex­am­ined by a Cab­i­net team.

This fol­lows the re­open­ing of busi­ness­es, and so­cial me­dia high­light­ing var­i­ous is­sues in­volv­ing work­ers and em­ploy­ers. Mc­Clashie said the gov­ern­ment was aware of the is­sues that were oc­cur­ring and didn’t want work­ers to be ex­ploit­ed or any mix-ups.

Guide­lines take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion all in­dus­tri­al is­sues and ef­fects on work­places and add clar­i­ty to Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion—vac­ci­nate to op­er­ate—as the best way for eco­nom­ic re­open­ing—but there’s no manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion in this.

Once ap­proved con­sul­ta­tions fol­low with work­ers’ rep­re­sen­ta­tives and em­ploy­ers who’ll be giv­en the guide­lines to com­ment up­on.