By Richard Morais and Roy Stanford, Freelance Writers
Some of the 116 illegal Haitian immigrants who drifted into Falmouth's waters, Trelawny, yesterday, being taken to shore by a fishing boat. They are now being housed at the Falmouth Hospital. - Richard Morais
FALMOUTH, Trelawny:
A TOTAL of 116 Haitians crammed in a 35-foot fishing boat, landed in Falmouth yesterday.
The group is made up of 11 children aged five months to 11 years, 44 women and 61 men who were being housed yesterday at the Falmouth Hospital, after landing at the Half-Moon Bay fishing and bathing beach.
They had been on the high seas for five days, with little food and water. Police said it was the largest batch of immigrants to land here at any one time, in recent years.
According to Danny Broderick, a Falmouth resident who was the first to come across the foreigners, he had gone to the beach around 6 a.m. to buy fish when he heard people shouting for help.
He and the only other person on the beach then, shoved off in a boat and went to the aid of the people who turned out to be Haitians.
He said that some of the Haitians were so weak that he had to help them into his boat; he rescued a baby who was about to fall from its mother's arms.
He said the police were alerted and they took charge of the Haitians.
Willy Gordon, a fisherman who went with a larger boat to assist, said he took 70 of the Haitians to shore.
The Haitians were taken under police supervision to the Falmouth Hospital where they were examined.
A Haitian who speaks some English, said the group set out about 11 a.m. on Tuesday for Florida, but without proper navigational equipment. With the sun, wind and rain beating down on them, they were blown off course and drifted to Jamaica.
The group said they were fleeing poverty and political victimisation. Speaking to The Gleaner in Creole, Mwele Jean-Jefoir, 62, said he had been shot in the chest because he did not support the political party in power.
"The bullet went in through here," he told The Gleaner unbuttoning his shirt and revealing a scar on the right side of the chest.
"I am very lucky to be alive. We cannot live in Haiti under such conditions." He said he left his wife and eight children in Haiti and hoped to receive political asylum here in Jamaica.
Another member of the group, who did not want his name used, said they were fleeing a country that had descended into a quagmire of political and economic misery.
"There is no food, no work, no political stability in Haiti. All these people had no choice but to leave," he said.
Dr. Alexander Konstantinov, the Ministry of Health's Western Regional Technical Director, told The Gleaner that the Haitians generally appeared to have suffered no serious effects, but a few, he said, seemed dehydrated.
The Haitians will remain for a few days at the hospital where they are being housed in a special ward that had been vacant. Along with the police and Immigration Officers, representatives of agencies such as the Ministries of Health and of Social Security, Jamaica Red Cross, and the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, were at the hospital helping the illegal immigrants.
After news of the Haitians' arrival broke, a steady stream of spectators have been converging on the hospital for a glimpse of them.
