Pres­sure is mount­ing against the Gov­ern­ment's pub­lic sec­tor safe zone pol­i­cy, which calls for all em­ploy­ees of State agen­cies and com­pa­nies to be vac­ci­nat­ed by mid-Jan­u­ary.

Yes­ter­day, the Joint Trade Union Move­ment held an­oth­er news con­fer­ence about the move, this time urg­ing pub­lic sec­tor work­ers, vac­ci­nat­ed or not, to re­port for du­ty as planned come Jan­u­ary 17, the first work­ing day af­ter the dead­line.

Oth­er less­er-known unions have emerged adding their voic­es to the de­bate, ar­gu­ing that it is the work­er's right to choose to be vac­ci­nat­ed or not.

They too have claimed the pol­i­cy an­nounced by the Prime Min­is­ter in De­cem­ber seeks to ar­bi­trar­i­ly al­ter the terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment for the work­ers.

Some oth­er unions have al­so come for­ward with down­right bizarre the­o­ries even ques­tion­ing the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of COVID-19 deaths, in the hope that this will some­how eclipse the harsh re­al­i­ty fac­ing the coun­try for al­most two years.

The Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion, the union which ac­tu­al­ly rep­re­sents pub­lic ser­vants, yes­ter­day chid­ed the Gov­ern­ment for not meet­ing with them be­fore an­nounc­ing its de­ci­sion.

It al­so said there could have been bet­ter col­lab­o­ra­tion with trade unions in en­sur­ing some mea­sures were ad­hered to in a bid to keep hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions down - such as mask-wear­ing, so­cial dis­tanc­ing among oth­ers.

While there may be some va­lid­i­ty in that log­ic, no amount of ver­bal gym­nas­tics could erase the sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly proven fact that vac­ci­na­tions are re­quired to win the bat­tle against COVID-19.

As it stands now the coun­try's COVID-19 death toll is inch­ing clos­er to an­oth­er grim mile­stone - 3,000.

Health of­fi­cials are ready­ing them­selves and have put mea­sures in place to treat with a post-Christ­mas COVID spike. Cas­es of the Omi­cron vari­ant are climb­ing.

The coun­try is far from be­ing out of the woods where the dis­ease is con­cerned.

While the Gov­ern­ment could have con­sult­ed with unions rep­re­sent­ing pub­lic sec­tor work­ers be­fore­hand, the unions them­selves could al­so have done more par­tic­u­lar­ly as the coun­try's COVID sit­u­a­tion wors­ened.

While re­spect­ing an in­di­vid­ual's right to choose, ed­u­ca­tion about COVID-19 vac­cines, which some union lead­ers have ad­mit­ted to tak­ing, could have gone a long way to al­lay some of the fears and con­cerns of work­ers.

Who bet­ter than those fight­ing for the rights of the work­ing class to reach out and con­nect with them on such a crit­i­cal mat­ter.

De­spite the mount­ing op­po­si­tion, Gov­ern­ment would do well to stay on course with its plan to in­crease the vac­ci­na­tion rate.

Oth­er coun­tries have faced sim­i­lar re­sis­tance and even worse but per­sist­ed.

The new dash­board from the Min­istry of Health, shows quite clear­ly the num­ber of un­vac­ci­nat­ed cit­i­zens who died from COVID-19 far ex­ceed those who were ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and suc­cumbed to the dis­ease.

What fur­ther ev­i­dence do pub­lic sec­tor work­ers and unions need?

This news­pa­per asks again, how many more must die be­fore we do what is re­quired to see the end of COVID-19?