The Heads of the Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tions com­pris­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial & Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Sec­ond Di­vi­sion, and the Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Sec­ond Di­vi­sion, met in an emer­gency meet­ing on to­day to ad­dress the an­nounce­ment made by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­thRow­ley, for the re­quire­ment for vac­ci­na­tions of all Gov­ern­ment work­ers from Jan­u­ary 2022, along with the con­se­quence at­tached for non-com­pli­ance.

On the com­ple­tion of the dis­cus­sions the fol­low­ing po­si­tions were agreed up­on.

"We are not in sup­port of any Con­struc­tive Manda­to­ry Vac­ci­na­tion, as we deemed it the same as Manda­to­ry Vac­ci­na­tion.

The vary­ing of Terms and Con­di­tions of Em­ploy­ment with­out con­sul­ta­tion is il­le­gal and goes against all es­tab­lished In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Prac­tices/Laws, as ar­tic­u­lat­ed by the Pres­i­dent of the In­dus­tri­al Court, Mrs. Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix.

Every per­son has the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to the en­joy­ment of prop­er­ty and for work­ers that is their salaries. The an­nounce­ment threat­ens to vi­o­late those rights, which we ut­ter­ly re­ject.

We have deemed the ac­tion to im­pose a “qua­si safe zone” work en­vi­ron­ment as be­ing Dis­crim­i­na­to­ry against the Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices giv­en our dai­ly func­tions with the gen­er­al pub­lic and pris­on­ers, who are not con­di­tioned to such man­dates.

The Gov­ern­ment must make an of­fi­cial pro­nounce­ment on work­ers con­cerns over claims of Li­a­bil­i­ties for ad­verse re­ac­tions as­so­ci­at­ed to the vac­ci­na­tion."

The joint re­lease said that the Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices and by ex­ten­sion the Es­sen­tial Ser­vices have been stead­fast in their du­ties dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, while oth­er pub­lic of­fi­cers "en­joy the lux­u­ry of be­ing at home". "Im­me­di­ate steps should be tak­en to ap­pro­pri­ate­ly com­pen­sate these work­ers. Col­lec­tive­ly, as the bar­gain­ing bod­ies for mem­bers of the Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices, we will con­tin­ue to de­fend the in­ter­est of our mem­bers and have al­ways sought con­sul­ta­tion with the Prime Min­is­ter, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Nev­er­the­less, we will not al­low our mem­bers con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to be tram­pled up­on."