KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC – The Court of Appeal has reportedly considered the arguments by the parties challenging the COVID-19 vaccine mandate in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Still, according to one of the lawyers involved, it is yet to deliver a ruling.
Attorney Jomo Thomas, speaking on his radio program here on Wednesday, said that a Court of Appeal judge had considered the arguments on Tuesday but that the court has yet to make its decision.
“The matter was heard yesterday, and we are waiting for a decision as regards the stay,” Thomas told radio listeners.
Lawyers for both the state and the plaintiffs did not have to appear before the judge, who considered the papers submitted in support of and against the application for the stay.
On March 13, High Court judge Justice Esco Henry ruled that the workers, forced out of their jobs in December 2021 for failing to take a COVID-19 vaccine, never ceased to be entitled to hold the respective offices to which they had been appointed.
She said they are entitled to full pay and all benefits due and payable to them in their respective capacities as public officers or police officers, inclusive of any accrued pension and gratuity benefits or rights from the respective dates on which they were deemed to have resigned.
But the Ralph Gonsalves government has appealed the ruling and applied for a stay of execution of the court’s order, pending the appeal’s outcome.
Thomas had argued that if the Appeal Court grants the stay, his legal team will push for the appeal to be heard swiftly, adding that the complainants are confident that the Appeal Court will uphold Justice Henry’s decision.
“Hopefully, we can have it done in July when the court comes here,” he said, adding that the Court of Appeal, an itinerant court, comes to St. Vincent the week of July 14.
“I know that as one of the attorneys and as part of a team of attorneys on that matter, we are hoping that the court does not grant the stay so that the government can proceed to make arrangements to pay the workers and let the matter be heard in [July],” Thomas said.
He reiterated his view that “the government has a high mountain to climb, to have the substantive appeal overturned,” adding “and that mountain is higher than Soufriere,” referring to St. Vincent’s 4,048-foot volcano.
Thomas said the affected workers have been off the job for 17 months, adding that if the Court of Appeal does not grant a stay of execution of the High Court order, the government will have to start paying the salaries that the workers would have received had it not been for the government’s actions to fire them.
Thomas said the workers have until June 24 “to come up with whatever damages they may have suffered.
“So, for example, the court says that they were improperly removed from their jobs, they weren’t getting salaries, they couldn’t pay their mortgage, they couldn’t pay their insurance, they couldn’t do certain things.
“Because they cannot do that, they may have gone into default. There’s a huge interest backup now for a year or more. The government would be responsible for paying all that, to bring them back to where they were before the government unlawfully removed them from their jobs.”
He said that if the government does get a stay of execution, “and then the substantive appeal is heard, and Henry’s decision is upheld, as we expect it would be, then the government would still have to make all of those payments.
“What we don’t want is for the government to get a stay and then for them to engage in some kind of stalling tactics to pressure the workers into, to browbeat the workers, to stonewall the workers into applying, reapplying for a job by the mere economic pressure that would come down on them,” he said earlier, adding “we have to remember it’s 17 months now and counting that these workers were arbitrarily, unlawfully, unconstitutional kicked out of their jobs, denied salaries, and that dismissal and the denial of salaries have put many of them….”
and then 