Trade Unions in St Vincent and the Grenadines will hold two days of protests in Kingstown, the capital of St Vincent and the Grenadines.
The Unions are the Public Service Union, The SVG Teachers Union and the Police Welfare Association.
The two days of protests, which will be held on (Wednesday 22) and Thursday 23, are in opposition to the government policy of mandatory vaccination for frontline workers.
On Monday, President of the SVGTU, Oswald Robinson said, the body has already warned members to be aware of the government’s attempt to use the divide and rule strategy.
This is why we said to our workers ‘you have to be focused; you have to stay with the organization who have the voice for you. Whatever comes your way, you take it, but don’t see it as a bribe, okay, because people are being rewarded for not participating or listening to the voice of the unions”.
“The government has not given retroactive payments for many years for persons who finished university and teachers’ college, and when we were planning protest action, all of a sudden, a whole set of our teachers got retroactive payments,” Robinson said.
Ahead of the press conference, the union leader said Monday that over 100 teachers had up to that point received letters of dismissal, of which 44 had submitted their letters to the union for documentation.
Prime Minister Gonsalves announced recently that authorities had been employing persons, including retired teachers and untrained graduates, to replace those who have been dismissed.
The government had issued an ultimatum for workers, who are considered to be frontline, to take the Covid-19 vaccine by November 19, 2021, failing which they were barred from the workplace. The workers were granted ten days after November 19 to take the vaccine and return to work, failing which they were deemed to have abandoned their job.
Robinson said that the presence of the legal counsels at the press conference was a testimony of their promise to challenge the Statutory Rule and Order SR&O) published in the Government Gazette a few months ago to operationalize the vaccine mandate following the passage of a bill to amend the Public Health Act on August 6, 2021.
“We will do everything within the confines of the law to show him what we really mean about interfering with the constitution of St Vincent and the Grenadines”, Robinson said.
The two days of protests will take place in front of the Administrative Complex which houses the office of the Prime Minister.
