DOMINICA-St. Vincent government to appeal ruling in controversial COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

0
279

ROSEAU, Dominica, CMC – Senior Counsel Anthony Astaphan says he expects to file by Wednesday an appeal of the ruling by High Court judge Justice Esco Henry, who last week ruled that St. Vincent and the Grenadines government’s actions in implementing the vaccine mandate constitute a breach of natural justice, contradict the Constitution, were unlawful, procedurally-improper and wrong.

In her ruling, the judge said that the workers fired for not taking a coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine by December 2021 never ceased to be employed by the government. They are entitled to their salaries and benefits as punitive damages.

But the Dominican-born Senior Counsel, speaking on a radio program here, said it is essential for the Ralph Gonsalves administration to appeal the ruling because of its public interest in Kingston and across the region.

“We have advised the government that an appeal has considerable merit. We have also urged the government that in the public interest, a request is required for the straightforward reason that the government needs to know and to have the guidance of a higher court on what needs to be done or should be done, or should not be done when an executive branch of the government and the cabinet are confronted with a crisis like an infectious disease and hospitalize its citizens.

“The Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines has accepted our advice and instructed us to proceed, and proceed we will. We intend by Wednesday at the latest to file a notice of appeal and an application for a stay of execution of the judgment so that we can proceed with an appeal as soon as possible,” Astaphan said.

“We ought not to lose sight of the context, which was decisions made to protect lives, public servants’ health, and the public’s general health amid a COVID crisis ravaging the entire world with considerable loss of lives.”

Astaphan said that the case arose in the first instance “because the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines took measures to protect public servants’ health based on the medical advice of the Chief Medical Officer, which, as far as I recall, was uncontradicted during the trial.”

In her ruling, the judge said that the Commissioner of Police (COP) and the chairman of the Public Service Commission (PSC) admitted that they ceded to the minister of health, without debate or challenge, powers that the Constitution gave explicitly to them.

“In my opinion, this can only be characterized as the abdication of their jurisdiction and responsibility in favor of the minister and the minister of national security.

“This application resulted in this case in what the framers of the Constitution were seeking to avoid by insulating public officers and police officers from the interference in their employment relationship with the Crown by political or other actors,” the judge added.

The court held that the PSC, the COP, and the Police Service Commission, by invoking, respectively, Public Service Regulation 31 and section 73 (a) of the Police Act, acted in a procedurally improper manner or misdirected themselves and acted illegally by acting on the minister’s directions to them to deem that the claimants had resigned their offices.

Regulation, 31 of the PSC Regulations says that a public officer absent from duty without being on leave for ten days is considered to have abandoned his job.

Under the vaccine mandate implemented in December 2021, public sector workers, whom the Minister of Health had deemed to be frontline workers, were required to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Any unvaccinated workers who attended work were considered absent, and after ten days, they were deemed to have abandoned their job.

Justice Henry said that while there is no direct evidence of direction or control from any person, the COP and the PSC, as well as the Police Service Commission, “demonstrated that they did not address their minds to the reality that they were vested with exclusive authority to make rules governing appointment and termination of employment of their employees.”

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here