Pres­i­dent of the Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion Robin Narayns­ingh is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide vac­cines for its work­ers as he said they too are es­sen­tial work­ers.

"The gas sta­tion work­ers are al­so es­sen­tial work­ers. I am sure that the Gov­ern­ment would give them pri­or­i­ty. We had reached out to our line min­is­ter, the En­er­gy Min­is­ter, Stu­art Young. He has not ac­knowl­edged our let­ter. I be­lieve that he has got some vac­cines for some of the en­er­gy sec­tor, but he nev­er reached out to us,” Narayns­ingh said yes­ter­day.

He said that there are about 150 gas sta­tions in T&T.

"Each gas sta­tion em­ploys at least six peo­ple. The coun­try needs fu­el, the po­lice, the health sec­tor. These are not front­line work­ers, but they are es­sen­tial work­ers. Most gas sta­tion work­ers are poor and un­der­priv­i­leged work­ing for the min­i­mum wage. You can­not dis­en­fran­chise them from the func­tion that they do for so­ci­ety. These work­ers do yeo­man ser­vice for the coun­try and yet oth­ers are giv­en pri­or­i­ty over them.”

This comes as oth­er eco­nom­ic sec­tors will be­gin to vac­ci­nate their em­ploy­ees.

Front­lin­ers in the su­per­mar­ket sec­tor to get vac­ci­nat­ed from Tues­day

Ac­cord­ing to a me­dia re­lease from the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT), it has es­tab­lished the first pri­vate-pub­lic part­ner­ship (PPP) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Health to vac­ci­nate front­lin­ers in the su­per­mar­ket sec­tor.

This joint SATT-Min­istry of Health ini­tia­tive will al­so be ex­tend­ed for phar­ma­cists in the pri­vate sec­tor.

“This ef­fort has been made pos­si­ble by fur­ther­ing talks with Min­istry of Health who have made thou­sands of vac­cines avail­able to­wards the sec­tor. They ac­knowl­edge that su­per­mar­ket em­ploy­ees are at di­rect risk for trans­mis­sion of the COVID-19 virus and de­serve pri­or­i­ty at this time. To this end, Min­istry of Health has made avail­able the Sinopharm COVID-19 vac­cine for ad­min­is­tra­tion for im­me­di­ate in­oc­u­la­tion of those em­ploy­ees de­sirous of re­ceiv­ing it.”

SATT said it has es­tab­lished a mass vac­ci­na­tion site at Cen­trum Au­di­to­ri­um at Cen­tre Point Mall in Ch­agua­nas and this lo­ca­tion will be out­fit­ted and op­er­at­ed by Min­istry of Health sup­port­ed by SATT staffers.

The on­go­ing vac­ci­na­tion ex­er­cise will be­gin on Tues­day for a lim­it­ed pe­ri­od. A dig­i­tal reg­is­tra­tion plat­form has been es­tab­lished by SATT "in ac­cor­dance with screen­ing cri­te­ria, which has been shared to its mem­ber­ship with over­whelm­ing sub­scrip­tion feed­back."

TTMA vac­ci­na­tion for busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to­day

Mean­while, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) stat­ed that in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Health and the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try it will be con­duct­ing a vac­cine dri­ve for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

The me­dia re­lease said that the Min­istry of Health has sanc­tioned the ad­min­is­tra­tion of vac­cines to be su­per­vised by Pres­i­dent of the T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion Dr Vishi Y Be­har­ry.

The Min­istry of Health will pro­vide the As­traZeneca vac­cine to be ad­min­is­tered at Di­vali Na­gar site to­day.

This vac­cine dri­ve will tar­get first-dose vac­ci­na­tion ap­point­ments on­ly.