Chief Secretary Farley Augustine has described as impractical, the position by the Prime Minister that by mid-January, all public servants and employees at state agencies, including national security, will be required to be vaccinated to go to work, or they can choose to stay home without pay.

At the weekly post-Executive Council news conference on Wednesday, Augustine declared, "That is a recipe for disaster.”

The Tobago House of Assembly (THA) currently employs approximately 60 per cent of the island's workforce.

Augustine quoted Dr Rowley's statistics which show that 50 per cent of the staff at the Tobago Regional Health Authority (TRHA) is unvaccinated.

“I want you to understand what this means. If we say to the unvaccinated TRHA workers: 'Don't come to work, you won't get paid – you won't be laid off, you still part of the establishment, just don’t come to work.' You can expect to go to the hospital and only see meet 50 per cent of the staff there. That is a recipe for disaster.

"It means we are getting more dead people than we are getting right now. And I don’t think that is even practical as far as Tobago is concerned.”

He said from a cursory assessment, it would appear that if this route is taken, that the vaccinated who would be showing up to work would also not get paid.

“We won’t have enough people to process salaries. We won’t have enough people for the functioning of the THA..."

He said the Assembly has no control over staff that is paid by the Central Government but for those employed by the THA, the Chief Administrator is already looking into the situation.

[caption id="attachment_930989" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Premnath Ramkissoon receives his booster shot of the covid19 vaccine at a drive-through mass vaccination site at the Hasely Crawford Stadium, Port of Spain. - Photo by Sureash Cholai[/caption]

"Police and Fire and Air Traffic Control – those are under the remit of the Central Government and not the THA, the THA does not pay those categories of workers.

"But before we make a final determination on what we would do with our workers that we pay, I have asked the Chief Administrator and she has sent a circular out to all departments of the THA asking to get an assessment of the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated and that will help us determine the route we will take. We cannot have a situation where the cost of the candle is more than the cost of the funeral.”

He said the THA is assessing the situation and the implications for Tobago.

“We are treading the situation cautiously, notwithstanding the fact that there were no consultations with anybody – no one from the Central Government reached out to us before they made their ideate so we could have given them an assessment beforehand of what our staffing situation vis-a-vis those who are vaccinated versus those who are unvaccinated.”

The Division of Health, Wellness and Social Protection on Wednesday reported 20 new covid19 cases whic