High risk! - Why the Gov’t did not grant cruise ship workers landing

Damion Mitchell, Integration Editor

One week after a group of heartbroken Jamaican ship workers reported that they were denied landing in Kingston, the Government yesterday said that when the vessel pulled out of Jamaican waters, it could not have guaranteed permission to disembark.

In a joint statement by the national security and foreign affairs ministries, the Government said, however, that efforts were under way by the health authorities to ascertain the temperature data of the crew aboard the Marella Discovery 2 so that a recommendation for landing exemption for the Jamaicans could have been made to the Cabinet.

According to the statement, the ship docked south of Port Royal on the evening of April 2, at which time the Emergency Health Operations Committee became aware of the matter and the vessel left on the afternoon of April 3.

“The efforts regarding possible facilitation of the landing of the workers were, therefore, discontinued,” said a spokesperson in the statement.

This statement has raised further questions about the conditions under which the Jamaican Government would have been prepared to outrightly refuse landing for 43 of its citizens.

Meanwhile, the statement did not say whether the health authorities had received the requested temperature logs for the crew or any report of COVID-19 aboard.

But it said that as part of the preparation for the possible admission of the Jamaicans, the health authorities were seeking to identify appropriate quarantine facilities and supporting resources to recommend to the Cabinet.

“The risk of accepting nearly 50 additional persons from a cruise ship, especially without confirmed quarantine arrangements, would have been particularly high at that time and would clearly have posed a further threat to the public health and safety,” the government spokesperson said in the statement.

Workers on the ship have told The Gleaner that for the 21 days the ship was on the seas before it came to Jamaica, there was no report of new coronavirus on board and none of the more than 700 workers had reported feeling ill.

Last night, Opposition Spokesman on National Security Fitz Jackson said that the Government’s response was unfortunate and regrettable.

“It offers no comfort to neither the 43 Jamaicans, their families, nor any well-thinking Jamaican,” he said.

According to Jackson, between April 2 and 3, the Government made no communication with the ship’s captain or his agent of any efforts being made to facilitate the Jamaicans’ disembarkation.

He said that under those circumstances, the Government could not reasonably expect the ship to remain here.

“The Government, therefore, should humbly acknowledge the failure and take the steps to immediately remedy the situation,” Jackson said.

The ship had left Jamaica en route to the Dominican Republic, where its nationals disembarked, then to Portugal, but word came on Sunday that the vessel was also denied landing in Lisbon.

The ship has since diverted to the United Kingdom, which has so far seen more than 10,000 coronavirus deaths.

Meanwhile, the Holness administration has reiterated that it is considering a programme for the controlled return of some Jamaicans overseas.