(Kingstown – St Vincent ) – Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves says there would be no mandatory vaccination in St Vincent and the Grenadines.
“This thing that we are amending the Public Health Act to make vaccination of everybody mandatory, that is not so.”
“We are amending the Public Health Act because there are certain categories we’ll have to make regulations for as the circumstances admit for either mandatory testing after the required requisite notice periods and the like and or testing.”
Gonsalves said the government would be putting the legal framework tidily in place to have relevant regulations so that the private sector would be able to make specific requirements.
“It is not somebody mandating that you have to do it. You will have a choice. How can you reasonably tell me you’re working in a front-line nursing position during a pandemic where there are all these terrible variants out there? You’re telling me that you don’t want to be vaccinated. Or as the circumstances admit to being tested every Monday or every other Monday. You have to put the legal framework in place for that”.
“Then immigration and customs officers, people who work at the airport, people who work at a cruise ship pier, people who are going to drive taxis, surely, there are certain categories of workers from whom more is going to be expected in terms of vaccination and testing.”
“But nobody is going to tell you that it’s an offense if you don’t take the vaccine. Nobody’s forcing you to take the vaccine. So it’s not mandatory that they’re forcing you to take the vaccine, but there are certain categories of workers if you don’t want to take the vaccine you can’t work there; you have to work somewhere else”.
“If they don’t take the vaccine, the law is not going to do this to you, or do that to you,” Gonsalves said.
In response to the leader of the Opposition’s statement that the government wants to force vaccination on the population, Gonsalves said, the Opposition leader is opportunistic on the issue.
“He says I’m saying to you take the vaccine; please take it, because I take it. And then all utterances are for all practical purposes anti-vax”, Gonsalves said.
