‘Vaccination Rollout Inclusive Of Private Sector’

Botswana Sector of Educators Trade Union (BOSETU) says the ongoing education sector vaccination rollout is not only targeting public schools but is also inclusive of teachers and other workers in private institutions.

BOSETU secretary-general Tobokani Rari told The Monitor that they expect the vaccination rollout to be completed in two weeks.

The public sector boasts an estimated 26,000 staff including the tertiary education sub-sector, with BOSETU commanding 19,000 membership.

“The campaign by BOSETU that all educators and the support staff in education should be vaccinated before schools re-open includes all workers that provide service within the educational institutions.

It has never been selective to only teachers/educators, as some want to put it. Even during the ongoing vaccination process, where we found support staff being discriminated, we intervened successfully,” Rari further explained.

The secretary-general says to date, they have registered 141 COVID-19 related deaths in the education sector, among them 124 teachers and 37 ancillary staff.

“I can assure everyone that teachers have always wanted to go back to schools and teach any day, but they could not go back to execute their teaching mandate when they had not been vaccinated.

“Schools are no doubt super-spreaders of COVID-19 and as such have greatly exposed teachers as evidenced by the high infection rates in schools and the highest death rates within the education sector.

So, educators and support staff needed to be protected against such exposing environments through vaccination.

Our members are ready to carry out their duties following vaccination,” he added.

Since there were only two weeks allocated for the vaccination of the teaching sector and to reopen schools, Rari suggested that more service points should be opened to fast-track the vaccination of educators.

“The final year nursing students, for instance, could be deployed in this vaccination exercise where there is a shortage of human resources,” he said.

“We are happy that government ultimately yielded to our demands. We are as well happy that ultimately, special vaccination centres were created, especially for educators and support staff.”

However, Rari said the exercise also experienced challenges: “There was a challenge though of a slow take off in centres.

Some of the centres wanted to turn away support staff and we made interventions. Some of our members in brigades, technical colleges and colleges of education in some regions were not catered for.

There were few vaccinating officers at the centres, hence the process became slow and people stayed in long queues at some centres.

They also ran out of doses. In some areas, educators are forced to travel long distances to access the vaccination centres,” he added.