TWO hundred and seventy workers who were dispatched to New Orleans under the hotel worker programme earlier this year, are set to return home after being displaced by the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina more than a week ago.,/B>

Last night the Ministry of Labour confirmed that 220 of the hotel workers will arrive today on three scheduled flights between Kingston and Montego Bay while another 50 workers are expected to arrive in the island on Friday. The workers are returning home approximately six weeks earlier than originally scheduled.

“Two-hundred-and-twenty of them will return tomorrow (today), 110 in Montego Bay on an Air Jamaica flight and another 110 in Kingston on two flights,” the ministry’s permanent secretary Alvin McIntosh told the Observer yesterday.

“When they arrive we will assist them with transportation as far as possible,” he added.

The workers were among 345 who were temporarily employed on properties in the Golf Coast and Biloxi in Mississippi that bore the brunt of the category four storm.

He said the ministry managed to redeploy 35 of the displaced workers to North Florida, while another 40 who expressed their interests to continue working until their six-month permit expired were awaiting transfers to other properties in areas such as Indiana and Missouri.

The workers who are heading for Jamaica, were yesterday transported from the hurricane ravaged cities to a facility in Florida, from which they would be sent to Jamaica.

“They were still in the area but we must note that where they were was in tact as the facilities suffered minimal damage,” he said. “We ensured that they got food and other supplies their welfare were protected.”

According to McIntosh, the workers were held up by delays in getting their wages and savings from banks that were severely damaged by the storm, while difficulties in getting transportation to take them to Florida proved another setback

Yesterday, he confirmed that several of the workers who are returning home between today and Friday had voluntarily requested so.

“Whatever decision has been taken, would be done in collaboration with them so if they are willing to accept alternate jobs, we offer them that option but if they want to return home then we grant them just that,” McIntosh told the Observer.

“Normally they would not return until October because their average stay is six month,” he explained. “But some of them may have been traumatised by the whole experience.”

McIntosh said, however, that the setback had minimal impact on the hotel worker and farm work programme.

“The total number of persons who were sent up last year, both hotel and farm-workers to Canada and the United States, was just about 14,057,” he said. “So far this year we have dispatched 12,300 workers and another 2,300 workers will be dispatched during the course of the next three months so we would have sent up 14,600.”

-martina@jamaicaobserver.com