The leadership of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Trade Union is making one claim about the success of its two day strike, while the Prime Minister Dr Ralph has related a totally different story.
Gonsalves said on radio that reports from officials at the Ministry of Education are that all schools opened on Tuesday and functioned well because “overwhelmingly, the teachers who were to turn up, turned up”.
He added and I quote“… As you know, there are some persons who are unvaccinated and who did not; naturally, their term would’ve come to an end…their term of employment, because they would not have taken the vaccine by the close of day on Friday 3rd and that number includes close to 200 who sought exemptions,” he said on NBC radio on Wednesday morning.
The prime minister is of the opinion that there was no increase in the number of teachers staying away from classes on Wednesday — the second of two days those teachers were asked by their union not to turn up to work as part of ongoing opposition to the government’s COVID-19 vaccine policy.
President, Oswald Robinson said at a press conference that over 50 per cent of schools responded to the union’s call to strike and that numbers were increasing. He, however did not give the number of teachers who stayed away from class.
We have another 10 per cent increase which is preliminary because we got this report very early”. This he said on the second day of strike, the union’s president reported“
Robinson said there were some schools who had already given parents commitment that they were going to do their tests so they didn’t really want to break that…commitment. So some of the schools, they administered the test and then went home and strike,”
He also added that “sometimes there is some flexibility, some understanding, being flexible to certain things, in the height of an action. So the momentum is there. I know for a fact, there are some schools who had 85 per cent of the staff; I actually got figures. On one occasion, they said 15 teachers were away from work, only four who showed up…”
The Union is creating an impact and that “the government right now is puzzled because I am very confident in going forward with these matters…”
