Update: Attorney demands answers from Gov't about ship workers coming home

Fifty-five crew members aboard the Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, currently on route to Jamaica, have retained the services of Jennifer Housen, attorney-at-law.

Housen, in a letter to the Andrew Holness-led Government is requesting that the government confirm if her clients will be allowed to disembark on May 23, 2020 once they arrive in the Jamaican port, and that the period of time served in isolated quarantine on board the vessel will be taken into account, in allowing them to be with their families on arrival. 

Housen noted that her clients have completed their online applications through the JAMCOVID website, which would have informed the government of their impeding arrival. 

The 55 crew members are among the 1,044 Jamaicans on-board the ship that is expected to arrive in Falmouth, Trelawny, tomorrow.

However, Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton says the local health system is "totally unprepared" for the ship workers.

READ: 1,044 ship workers coming but government 'totally unprepared' 

"May I remind the Minister that my clients, along with their additional 989 Jamaican national crew members onboard, have constitutional rights and freedoms. In particular, section 13(3)(f)(i) sets out their right to enter their home country, i.e., “…the right of freedom of movement, that is to say, the right of every citizen of Jamaica to enter Jamaica…” Housen's letter to the Government said.

She added: "It is my clients' contention, that the Government of Jamaica, in communications with the cruise line, as far back as mid-March 2020, had requested that my clients, along with other crew members across the fleet, be quarantined and isolated. Their further understanding was that the Government of Jamaica's request for their isolation, was in preparation for them being able to immediately disembark into Jamaica on May 23, 2020, after a short period of processing once they arrive at the Jamaican port on May 18, 2020. Indeed, in such anticipation and preparation, all of my clients have been in isolation now, for well over 14 days, some from as far back as March 16, 2020. This means, that these Jamaican nationals have been in a ship's cabin, without personal contact for the last two months. Their meals have been served to them by being left on a stool outside their cabins, and their clothes and bedlinen dealt with sensitively by being placed in plastic bags and collected outside their cabins to be treated. They have endured this, in the confident hope of what they were informed was their government's requirement for their disembarkation."

In a post on her twitter page, Housen stated that Jamaicans aboard the ship have been sidestepped by the government, whose ministers, amongst themselves, appear to abrogate any responsibility.

Last night, one of the Jamaican crew members told The Gleaner that in preparation for repatriation, some of the Jamaicans aboard the Adventure of the Seas have been in quarantine for a month.

Others who were transferred to that vessel from another have been in quarantine for almost a week, and so, as announced by the captain, although the ship will arrive in Falmouth on May 18, there would be no disembarkation until May 23 - that's after 15 days quarantine for the transfer batch.

"Senator Honourable Kamina Johnson Smith,... in the premises, therefore, I request the government's urgent response, certainly by or before May 22, 2020, given the grave and pressing circumstances in which my clients currently find themselves. I look forward to your urgent response," the statement ended by saying.

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