By Sue-Ann Wayow
BUSINESS owners who are strong arming their employees to have them vaccinated against Covid-19 are displaying draconian actions and lack sympathy towards a vulnerable group in society.
This is according to President of the Chaguanas Chamber of Industry and Commerce (CCIC) Richie Sookhai.
In a press release on Friday, Sookhai stated that the CCIC was an advocate for the vaccine and has partnered with the Couva/Pt Lisas Chamber of Industry and Commerce to conduct a mass vaccination drive in Couva.
However, the approach must be different as there was still a lot of persons who were hesitant in taking the vaccine. The CCIC is pushing for the use of new leadership tactics and moral suasion to encourage staff members on both the rewards of vaccination and the risks of remaining unvaccinated.
“All business leaders need to display a new style of leadership to defeat this virus, but direct or indirect measures of force will not work,” he said.
His comments come after several letters to employees have been shared on social media with employees who were unvaccinated being required to have a PCR test done at their own cost every 14 days.
Sookhai said, “While the Chamber understands that businesses are doing whatever is necessary to ensure that their customers and staff members are safe, it is our duty as leaders to motivate, educate and inspire employees and by extension their families toward vaccination. Nevertheless, the measures taken by some business owners to require the submission of regular PCR tests are draconian and it displays a lack of sympathy to a segment of society that has been hit the hardest by the onslaught of the virus.”
The average cost of a PCR test ranges from $1,000 to $1,500 and having a regular PCR test would not only be burdensome to employees but would also erode a large portion of their income Sookhai said.
He continued: “Even at the vaccination site, there were people at the front gate, still hesitant about being vaccinated and we were able to persuade them to proceed. Those that required additional counsel received comfort about the safety and benefits of the vaccine by the medical professionals present. We understand how critical it is to be vaccinated but we did not resort to indirect measures of force.”
One of the reasons contributing to vaccine hesitancy was the foreign policy stance taken by particular countries on specific vaccines and citizens have refused to get jabs because they do not have choices. In various countries, some in which relatives of T&T nationals reside, exclusionary policies have been implemented and many members of the public have opted to avoid vaccination until they were given a vaccine choice that was not restrictive to their future travel plans, the chamber’s president said.
He added that the government has made the effort to have large amounts of vaccines available and the business community was grateful. While the CCIC was pleased with the outcome of the private sector’s mass vaccination sites, more still needed to be done before the country gets to the stage of herd immunity.
The CCIC is asking government to procure alternative brands of vaccines, which would encourage more of the population to be inoculated.
And the CCIC made an appeal to unvaccinated citizens to be proactive in receiving the vaccine.
“Do not wait until close relatives contract the virus to a make decision that could have been made before. Many families have lost loved ones to the virus because they adopted this mindset,” Sookhai said.
