As the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues with its “Vac­ci­nate to Op­er­ate” pol­i­cy to re­sume some lev­el of nor­mal life, var­i­ous busi­ness and so­cial sec­tors are gear­ing up to get their mem­bers im­mu­nised against COVID-19.

Dur­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s week­ly me­dia con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh an­nounced the in­clu­sion of sev­er­al new sec­tors in the Min­istry of Health’s vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme.

With 600,000 dos­es ex­pect­ed with­in the next two months, Deyals­ingh said prison of­fi­cers, pris­on­ers, im­mi­gra­tion per­son­nel, maxi and taxi dri­vers, agri­cul­tur­al work­ers, cler­gy mem­bers and oth­ers would qual­i­fy. How­ev­er, de­tails of those vac­ci­na­tions are still out­stand­ing.

Yes­ter­day, In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion (IRO) pres­i­dent, Pun­dit Lloyd Mukram Sir­joo, said mem­bers of the re­li­gious groups play a vi­tal role dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

“The IRO will ad­vo­cate for get­ting mem­bers of the cler­gy vac­ci­nat­ed. While wed­dings can be post­poned, fu­ner­als can­not,” Sir­joo said.

So far, there has been no cor­re­spon­dence be­tween the min­istry and the IRO about the vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve. Sir­joo said he did not know if the min­istry would dis­trib­ute vac­cines through ma­jor groups like Ro­man Catholics, An­gli­cans and Pres­by­te­ri­ans. He con­sid­ered that if the min­istry did not use the IRO, it would be be­cause not all church­es are mem­bers.

The Pen­te­costal Church is not part of the IRO. How­ev­er, the IRO in­cludes the An­gli­can, Ro­man Catholic, Pres­by­ter­ian, MA­HA SA­BA, AS­JA, Trinidad Mus­lim League, Trinidad Acad­e­my of Hin­duism, Ba­ha’i and Or­isha faiths and oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions.

“Yes, I am wait­ing to see what will be giv­en to us. Al­though church­es are not open be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, many re­li­gious lead­ers are still en­gag­ing their mem­ber­ships but not in a large con­gre­ga­tion. We still meet for fu­ner­al ser­vices. We are among the peo­ple but in small num­bers. We are still in­volved in meet­ings. You have to do what you have to do. It is im­por­tant.”

The IRO is sup­port­ing the vac­ci­na­tion of­fer to cler­gy mem­bers. How­ev­er, Sir­joo said they ac­knowl­edged how the Gov­ern­ment is con­duct­ing the process and will await their turn. 

Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety (ASTT) pres­i­dent Dar­ryl Ram­per­sad mean­while said the 10,000 dos­es al­lo­cat­ed to the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor could vac­ci­nate most farm­ers and some mar­ket ven­dors. He said they want pri­or­i­ty for those op­er­at­ing at the Nor­ris De­onar­ine North­ern Whole­sale Mar­ket, where there is a lot of busi­ness tak­ing place. How­ev­er, there has been no arrange­ment about the date, time and lo­ca­tion for this sec­tor.

“We are for vac­ci­na­tion be­cause I view the farm­ers, es­pe­cial­ly those in­volved in the whole­sale fa­cil­i­ty, at high risk. If you look at the size of the mar­ket, there are a few thou­sand reg­is­tered farm­ers, not to men­tion the peo­ple work­ing and the buy­ers. It can be an over­crowd­ed fa­cil­i­ty that does not al­low farm­ers to fol­low all the health pro­to­cols. I have been ad­vo­cat­ing for mem­bers to get vac­ci­nat­ed,” Ram­per­sad said.

The min­istry is al­so al­lo­cat­ing 5,000 dos­es to trans­porta­tion work­ers. Mem­bers of the Taxi Dri­vers’ Net­work (TTDN) were sched­uled to meet with the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan yes­ter­day.

TTDN pres­i­dent Adri­an Acos­ta said two weeks ago, the min­istry of­fered vac­cines to dri­vers but on­ly 30 re­spond­ed. Last week, the Gov­ern­ment in­creased the ca­pac­i­ty al­lowed in taxis and max­is from 50 to 75 per cent.

“I do not want any vac­cine, I am eat­ing plen­ty of zabo­ca, but I had to of­fer it to those who want it. I am hap­py that they are in­clud­ing us in this pro­gramme, and I hope it is not on­ly for that, but every­thing else.”

He said the TTDN has ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5,000 mem­bers from 30 dif­fer­ent taxi as­so­ci­a­tions.