Gail Alexan­der

“No forced vac­cine!”

The Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion rep­re­sent­ing po­lice, fire and prison of­fi­cers, yes­ter­day re­ject­ed Gov­ern­ment’s call for un­vac­ci­nat­ed state work­ers to take the COVID-19 vac­cine.

The as­so­ci­a­tion wants Gov­ern­ment to make an of­fi­cial pro­nounce­ment on work­ers’ con­cerns over claims of li­a­bil­i­ties for “ad­verse re­ac­tions” as­so­ci­at­ed with vac­ci­na­tion.

The group al­so wants pro­tec­tive ser­vice mem­bers to be com­pen­sat­ed for work­ing dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

Mem­bers cit­ed St Kitts’ re­cent an­nounce­ment of a dou­ble salary for its civ­il ser­vants.

The as­so­ci­a­tion com­pris­es the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial & Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) (Sec­ond Di­vi­sion) and the Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (FSA) (Sec­ond Di­vi­sion).

The as­so­ci­a­tions have dis­patched a let­ter to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley seek­ing a meet­ing with him be­fore the end of the week on their col­lec­tive po­si­tion. This was con­firmed by Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial & Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Gideon Dick­son yes­ter­day.

The heads is­sued a state­ment yes­ter­day to all mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices fol­low­ing an emer­gency meet­ing on last Sat­ur­day’s an­nounce­ment by Row­ley and the con­se­quence for non-com­pli­ance.

Row­ley had an­nounced that the pub­lic sec­tor would be made a safe zone, re­quir­ing all Gov­ern­ment work­ers to be vac­ci­nat­ed by mid-Jan­u­ary 2022.

Those who refuse vac­ci­na­tion will be fur­loughed—re­main­ing at home with­out pay, though their job will be in­tact.

Yes­ter­day’s state­ment from the as­so­ci­a­tion heads was signed by Dick­son, Cer­ron Richards (pres­i­dent, Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion) and Leo Ramkissoon (Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion). It was copied to Dr Row­ley.

They stat­ed, “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, 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.”

The state­ment con­tin­ued, “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 state­ment added, “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, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Gov­ern­ment. Nev­er­the­less, we will not al­low our mem­bers’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to be tram­pled up­on.”

As­so­ci­a­tions won’t dis­cour­age of­fi­cers

Dick­son said his as­so­ci­a­tion won’t dis­cour­age of­fi­cers who want to vac­ci­nate but didn’t want to break the law as it stands on terms and con­di­tions now, “Be­cause we are en­forcers of the law.”

“I’m vac­ci­nat­ed, so are the oth­er as­so­ci­a­tion heads. We en­cour­age mem­bers to vac­ci­nate. We say do your re­search and make the nec­es­sary choice once you’re com­fort­able with vac­ci­na­tion. But there are laws re­gard­ing terms and con­di­tions and we can’t vi­o­late that based on di­rec­tive of a pol­i­cy.”

On calls for fur­ther com­pen­sa­tion, Dick­son said pub­lic ser­vants got their salary and leave but of­fi­cers’ leave was re­strict­ed.

“We feel some form of (gra­tu­ity type) pay­ment is need­ed be­yond the sym­bol­ic clap of ap­pre­ci­a­tion giv­en a few months ago,” he said.

“We re­alise around the re­gion, front­line of­fi­cers are be­ing com­pen­sat­ed fur­ther such as in St Kitts and Guyana.”

Last week, St Kitts Prime Min­is­ter Tim­o­thy Har­ris an­nounced a dou­ble salary for civ­il ser­vants on that is­land. That was to as­sist those work­ers and gen­er­ate eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

POA pres­i­dent Cer­ron Richards al­so said prison of­fi­cers were free to vac­ci­nate if they want­ed but the POA was against forc­ing peo­ple to take it against their will. On why the vac­ci­na­tion rate for of­fi­cers was so low, he said it was their in­di­vid­ual choic­es, but he al­so felt the fig­ures giv­en last Sat­ur­day were skewed.

On fur­ther com­pen­sa­tion, Richards said prison of­fi­cers worked dur­ing the pan­dem­ic “with­out rest” while oth­er sec­tors had leave.

“We want recog­ni­tion in the form of com­pen­sa­tion.

FSA pres­i­dent Leo Ramkissoon said, “This pro­pos­al is un­con­sti­tu­tion­al. Chang­ing terms and con­di­tions re­quires con­sul­ta­tion, they could have spo­ken to us but they didn’t. We aren’t telling our mem­bers not to ac­cept vac­ci­na­tion, but peo­ple have the right to choose.”

“More could have been done by per­sua­sion but they haven’t en­gaged us to get vac­ci­nat­ed and find out mem­bers’ con­cerns. There’s a lot of mis­in­for­ma­tion and con­fu­sion out there.”

On more com­pen­sa­tion, Ramkissoon al­so cit­ed St Kitts “dou­ble salary” de­vel­op­ment. He added while Gov­ern­ment “clapped” of­fi­cers for be­ing on the job, they should have re­alised fire of­fi­cers are still on 2011-13 salaries and prices have sky­rock­et­ed.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, who will bring the law on the is­sue when Par­lia­ment re­sumes af­ter Christ­mas, said he was ad­dress­ing the mat­ter. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds didn’t re­ply to the as­so­ci­a­tions’ state­ment.