Gail Alexan­der

On track for next Mon­day?

The ques­tion of whether Gov­ern­ment is on track for the pro­ject­ed Jan­u­ary 17 start of qua­si pub­lic sec­tor safe zones will be ad­dressed “in the next day or two” ac­cord­ing to Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Allyson West yes­ter­day.

West replied on Thurs­day when Guardian Me­dia asked if the ad­min­is­tra­tion is on track for Jan­u­ary 17 since law for the plan is yet to be passed in both Hous­es of Par­lia­ment.

The date was pro­ject­ed in a De­cem­ber 31 memo to min­istries.

A bill ti­tled the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sion (Test­ing and Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion) is on Par­lia­ment’s agen­da to­day.

De­tails weren’t giv­en. But it’s ex­pect­ed to be laid in the Low­er House on Fri­day.

On Wednes­day, UNC whip David Lee said the Op­po­si­tion hadn’t re­ceived the bill and ex­pect­ed it to­day. “It has to be laid be­fore we get it,” he said.

UNC MP Rod­ney Charles said the bill wasn’t made avail­able to him.

He said, “Our hope is that in­ter­est groups and the Op­po­si­tion will have ad­e­quate time to re­view it and it will not be an­oth­er rush job.”

UNC’s Rudy In­dars­ingh said, “This Gov­ern­ment bun­gled pan­dem­ic leave and its work-from-home pol­i­cy and all in­di­ca­tors are that this (safe zone plan) will suf­fer a sim­i­lar fate.”

A De­cem­ber 31 mem­o­ran­dum from the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­istry had pro­ject­ed the “qua­si” safe zones would start Jan­u­ary 17 .

That in­volves pub­lic sec­tors be­ing manned on­ly by peo­ple who’ve pre­sent­ed proof of vac­ci­na­tion or ap­pro­pri­ate ex­emp­tion doc­u­men­ta­tion. Those un­vac­ci­nat­ed will be fur­loughed–re­main­ing at home mi­nus pay.

The min­istry’s memo had man­dat­ed Gov­ern­ment di­vi­sions to list the num­ber of vac­ci­nat­ed, un­vac­ci­nat­ed and oth­er staff who re­quire ex­emp­tions. It al­so gave dates– from last week– of­fer­ing vac­ci­na­tions at lo­ca­tions in North and South.

On Wednes­day, West told Guardian Me­dia the min­istry re­ceived feed­back from all min­istries on work­ers who are vac­ci­nat­ed, un­vaxxed or re­quire ex­emp­tions– but was still col­lat­ing in­for­ma­tion from the wider pub­lic sec­tor.

West said most min­istries in­di­cat­ed more than 75 per cent of their staffers are vac­ci­nat­ed. That was based on ver­bal re­spons­es. A few are in the 50 to 75 per cent range and there are two be­low 50 per cent.

The over­all av­er­age is 65 per cent, she added.

West added, “The Health Min­istry is press­ing ahead with pub­lic ser­vice vac­ci­na­tion sites which are not yet as busy as we ‘d hoped but are con­tin­u­ing to pro­vide ser­vice while some pub­lic ser­vants con­tin­ue to vis­it oth­er sites. So we’re hop­ing the (vac­ci­nat­ed) num­ber keeps im­prov­ing as we inch clos­er to D Day.’’

Asked yes­ter­day on whether all is on track for Jan­u­ary 17 start, she said the mat­ter would be ad­dressed in the next day or two.”

With 51- 54 per cent of the TTPS vac­ci­nat­ed, the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion yes­ter­day con­firmed some more of­fi­cers had tak­en up the TTPS’ of­fer of doc­tors to ad­vise on their health for them to de­cide on vac­ci­na­tions.

Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Den­nis Pul­chan said on­ly about 10 of­fi­cers dai­ly took up the of­fer of vac­ci­na­tions and health checks of­fered by the pris­ons since Mon­day. Fire Ser­vices vac­ci­na­tion lev­el had in­creased on­ly slight­ly re­cent­ly.

The Joint Trade Union Move­ment re­cent­ly told un­vac­ci­nat­ed work­ers to go to work and de­mand of their su­per­vi­sors to tell them why, if they’re told they couldn’t work. JTUM hosts a me­dia brief­ing to­day on the is­sue.