Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says em­ploy­ers ask­ing un­vac­ci­nat­ed staff to take the vac­cine or pay for PCR COVID tests on a reg­u­lar ba­sis, are mak­ing de­ci­sions based on their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the pop­u­la­tion.

He was re­spond­ing to a ques­tion on how he felt about em­ploy­ers' treat­ment of un­vac­ci­nat­ed staff at the week­ly me­dia brief­ing on Sat­ur­day at the Anne Mitchell Gift Au­di­to­ri­um, Scar­bor­ough Li­brary in To­ba­go. Dr Row­ley said em­ploy­ers are not just re­spon­si­ble for staff.

Some well-es­tab­lished busi­ness­es have made COVID-19 vac­cines manda­to­ry for staff. Oth­ers have in­formed un­vac­ci­nat­ed staff that they will not be ros­tered for work or must dou­ble mask and wear shields and take the PCR tests of­ten at their own ex­pense.

"The em­ploy­ers who are mak­ing that re­quests of the staff, they have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty not just to the rest of the staff, but to the rest of the pop­u­la­tion," the PM said.

"...Ba­si­cal­ly, what that pol­i­cy is do­ing is ask­ing peo­ple to as­sure oth­ers that they are not car­ry­ing the virus and pos­ing a threat to per­sons who have ex­er­cised their rights in a dif­fer­ent way.

"It's be­ing dis­cussed in the con­text of your right as a per­son, but I am sure by now you all know that we have all re­stric­tions on rights and your per­son­al be­hav­iour."

He al­so called for em­ploy­ers to show re­straint.

"Let us not ex­ploit the sit­u­a­tion to the dis­ad­van­tage un­fair­ly of oth­ers, but by the same to­ken, if you (em­ploy­ees) have tak­en a po­si­tion, there are oth­er po­si­tions that flow from that."

'We give up some leisure for liveli­hood'

Ad­dress­ing mat­ters in To­ba­go, he said he had heard the calls from peo­ple to re­open beach­es and bars to help the tourism in­dus­try but the Gov­ern­ment would not change its pol­i­cy, risk­ing in­creased in­fec­tions and jeop­ar­dis­ing the re­open­ing of schools in Sep­tem­ber.

"With re­spect to the beach­es, we would love for all of us to be out there, but be­cause of what the al­ter­na­tive is, the al­ter­na­tive of hav­ing every­body out there do­ing every­thing we want to do is that we can find our­selves, all of us back­ing up to a place that we don't want to go."

"We are mak­ing sac­ri­fices in ar­eas, not that you are unim­por­tant not that you are a non­con­trib­u­tor (tourism sec­tor)...We give up some leisure for liveli­hood."

Dr Row­ley said the Min­istry of Health would fo­cus its at­ten­tion on vac­ci­nat­ing as many peo­ple in the re­tail sec­tor as pos­si­ble so that sec­tor can re­open next. He called on care­tak­ers, gar­den­ers, hair­dressers, and masseurs to get vac­ci­nat­ed so the per­son­al ser­vices sec­tor can re­open in two weeks.

He said as the coun­try cel­e­brates Eman­ci­pa­tion Day on Sun­day, peo­ple should make it their pledge to "Eman­ci­pate them­selves from COVID and vac­ci­nate."

Asked whether the coun­try's 9 pm to 5 am cur­few re­mains in ef­fect al­though it is a long hol­i­day week­end, Dr Row­ley said the hours had not changed.