Aisha is on no-pay leave from her bank job un­til Sep­tem­ber.

And she hopes that it will not have to be ex­tend­ed any longer than that.

“I had no oth­er choice but to do this,” Aisha told Guardian Me­dia.

The rea­son why Aisha says she has no oth­er choice but to utilise sick leave is be­cause she has al­ready ex­haust­ed all of her va­ca­tion and sick leave en­ti­tle­ments in or­der to care for her four-year-old son fol­low­ing the clo­sure of schools in mid-March to stop the spread of COVID-19 in the coun­try.

With schools ex­pect­ed to re­open in Sep­tem­ber, Aisha has no choice but to stay at home with her son.

She has no one else she trusts to stay with him.

While many busi­ness­es were closed for var­i­ous por­tions of the COVID-19 lock­down pe­ri­od, Aisha was one of those who was con­sid­ered an es­sen­tial work­er.

But this sit­u­a­tion with Aisha is not an anom­aly.

It is a sit­u­a­tion be­ing faced by par­ents and guardians around the coun­try as schools and al­ter­na­tive child­care ser­vices re­main closed.

For a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the COVID-19 lock­down pe­ri­od, Joan was able to stay at home with her spe­cial needs teen daugh­ter, but when casi­nos re­opened two Mon­days ago she had to re­turn to work.

Joan did what many would think unimag­in­able.

She went to work and left her daugh­ter locked in­side the house by her­self.

A neigh­bour re­port­ed Joan to the po­lice.

Luck­i­ly, noth­ing hap­pened to the teen.

“What am I sup­posed to do? I have to work to get mon­ey and I need mon­ey to get food to eat,” Joan said.

It is a co­nun­drum that this coun­try’s lead­ers say they have been try­ing to con­tend with.

“We are hav­ing a pletho­ra of those is­sues com­ing up now. We are of the view that if some­body has to stay home be­cause of the virus that some con­sid­er­a­tion has to be giv­en be­cause who is go­ing to see about their child? Are they go­ing to leave their chil­dren un­at­tend­ed? Are you ask­ing moth­ers to make a de­ci­sion be­tween the health and the wel­fare of their chil­dren and safe­ty as op­posed to work?” Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette said.

An­nis­sette told of a sit­u­a­tion fac­ing one of the union’s mem­bers.

“There is a young la­dy who would have had to stay home from the port sim­ply be­cause she is a sin­gle par­ent, she would have lost em­ploy­ment through that. When she made the ap­pli­ca­tion to get the (salary re­lief) grant she was ad­vised it is on­ly for peo­ple who got laid off,” An­nisette said.

She is a dai­ly paid work­er.

“Women who find them­selves in a sit­u­a­tion where they are forced through the pan­dem­ic to stay home and mind their chil­dren are now find­ing them­selves in a sit­u­a­tion where em­ploy­ers are re­fus­ing to sign off on the forms on the ba­sis that it does not ap­ply to them,” he said.

An­nis­sette said one of the most un­for­tu­nate things is that the coun­try’s most vul­ner­a­ble are be­ing left ex­posed.

To orig­i­nal­ly deal with these kinds of cir­cum­stances to be faced by work­ing par­ents Labour Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus held a press con­fer­ence on March 15 and men­tioned “pan­dem­ic leave.”

“For the du­ra­tion of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic em­ploy­ers are re­quired to im­ple­ment Pan­dem­ic Leave pro­vi­sions with­in their or­gan­i­sa­tions in a com­pas­sion­ate man­ner which en­sures busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity whilst se­cur­ing the na­tion­al in­ter­est,” Bap­tiste-Primus said.

The of­fi­cers who were ex­pect­ed to be el­i­gi­ble for the pan­dem­ic leave with­in the pub­lic ser­vice were per­ma­nent, tem­po­rary, month­ly paid and dai­ly rat­ed pub­lic of­fi­cers, con­tract em­ploy­ees and on the job trainees among oth­ers.

How­ev­er, when asked about the pan­dem­ic leave in the Par­lia­ment in April, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley pan­dem­ic leave was no longer nec­es­sary.

“On March 15, 2020, the ref­er­ence to pan­dem­ic leave was a dis­cus­sion that took place very ear­ly in our re­sponse to the growth and progress of the COVID-19 virus. This mat­ter has been large­ly over­tak­en by the de­ci­sions that we have tak­en with re­spect to the stay at home where the en­tire pub­lic sec­tor work­force, ex­cept es­sen­tial work­ers and the pub­lic sec­tor, where we have em­barked up­on sig­nif­i­cant ex­ten­sion of the stay at home which ren­dered much of this con­cern re­dun­dant.,” Row­ley said.

Row­ley said when the is­sue of pan­dem­ic leave arose it was made very clear that it had to be ap­proved by the Cab­i­net.

“The Cab­i­net went fur­ther than that and kept the work­ing force at home. So the con­cern that gen­er­at­ed pan­dem­ic leave in its full­ness is no longer with us, and the mat­ter of whether you have some el­e­ment of it still be­ing con­sid­ered is still there but there is no pan­dem­ic leave as was ini­tial­ly en­vis­aged to take care of any per­son who may be away from work more than their 14-day sick leave,” Row­ley said.

“Madam Speak­er, that has been su­per­seded but there are con­sid­er­a­tions for oth­er de­vel­op­ments and that is a mat­ter for the Cab­i­net, and that is where the mat­ter lies at the mo­ment,” he said.

Trevor John­son the as­sis­tant gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) lament­ed that pan­dem­ic leave was not on the card.

“There was a lot of talk. A lot of bu­reau­cra­cy, a lot of so­cial di­a­logue but one of the im­pli­ca­tions of so­cial di­a­logue is that some­times it takes too long,” John­son said.

‘Up to now the Cab­i­net has not made a de­ci­sion on pan­dem­ic leave, in short pan­dem­ic leave does not ex­ist,” he said.

John­son said while pan­dem­ic leave was en­vi­sioned for the pub­lic sec­tor the in­ten­tion was for the pri­vate sec­tor to use com­pas­sion.

“What ex­ists now are dis­cre­tionary arrange­ments where ei­ther em­ploy­ers may im­ple­ment or unions may seek to have dis­cus­sions notwith­stand­ing there is noth­ing in the col­lec­tive agree­ment. Any union worth its salt will be­gin to en­gage em­ploy­ers in di­a­logue when­ev­er we get a re­quest,” John­son said.

“It is left re­al­ly to each union. There is noth­ing across the board that says this is what the gov­ern­ment is do­ing, this is what unions are do­ing it is re­al­ly left to each union in a unionised en­vi­ron­ment and the re­spec­tive em­ploy­ers,” he said.

John­son said each col­lec­tive agree­ment and so the unions have to en­gage the or­gan­i­sa­tions on a case by case ba­sis.

John­son said he knows of a sit­u­a­tion with a cou­ple with three young chil­dren and the moth­er was re­quired to work five days a week dur­ing the lock­down pe­ri­od.

“That is symp­to­matic of a change that many peo­ple are hav­ing,” John­son said.

John­son said the gov­ern­ment has side­stepped any tan­gi­ble so­lu­tion to the is­sue.