Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne has defended his government’s policy to enforce the recently announced vaccine mandate affecting the private sector workers.
The government has said that the private sector businesses with five or more employees must ensure that all staff members are vaccinated and that fines could be imposed should they fail to adhere to the new policy.
“Antigua and Barbuda is actually within pole position in the Caribbean in so far as vaccinations are concerned. Now within the private sector, we would have introduced some mandates about a week and a half ago and I believe they become effective shortly as well,” Prime Minister Browne said on his weekend radio program.
“We now have to look at the mechanism putting in place to monitor these private sector entities that are now legally mandated to get their staff vaccinated,” Browne told radio listeners, adding that at this week’s Cabinet meeting “we will be looking at the fines and to determine whether or not they are sufficient to serve as a deterrent”.
Browne acknowledged that there may be some employers “who would not be moving with alacrity to ensure to ensure that the staff is vaccinated”.
He said he believes the regulations passed a week and a half ago “stated that all employers with five or more staff…all of their staff members are required to be vaccinated and we will be putting systems in place to strictly enforce that policy.
“They may as well act voluntarily because at the end of the day we are not playing when it comes to protecting people against hospitalizations and deaths and at the same time we are not playing when it comes to protecting the country.”
Browne said that it is unfortunate that the main opposition United Progressive Party (UPP) has ‘continued to muddy the waters” as it relates to the vaccine program, criticizing their position that the government has gone too far and should not be mandating private sector employees to be vaccinated.
Last month, Prime Minister Browne said Antigua and Barbuda would be entering 2022 with most, if not all, of the measures put in place to curb the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, removed, whether or not a significant number of people are vaccinated.
“I want to make a point here too that we are moving towards dropping the state of emergency, the curfews and so on and eliminate most of the restrictions as we can by the end of the year,” Browne said.
“Now, lest say if we only get 60 percent of the population vaccinated, or 70 percent and we decide to drop those restrictions, it means therefore that individuals would come exposed, those unvaccinated persons.”
He said that nationals were given sufficient time to get vaccinated to curb the spread of the virus.
CMC
