Goodbye Jamrock! – 200 farm workers ran off in Canada last year

The Ministry of Labour and Social Security has reported that some 200 Jamaicans farm workers travelled to Canada and never returned in 2015.

The revelation was made at a hastily called press conference at the ministry’s North Street headquarters in Kingston on Tuesday to shoot down allegations that a Liaison Officer acted improperly in the case of Sheldon McKenzie, who died in the North American country after suffering a stroke while working on a tomato farm.

Director of Manpower Services in the ministry, Andrea Miller-Stennett, made the revelation that participants in the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Programme did not take the return flight home.

“A number of them did not return. The figure is more like 200 out of 8000,” she said.

The ministry has had to deal with the fact that many Jamaicans see North America as an escape route out of poverty and opt to live as illegal aliens rather than return to their homeland.

“It has been happening for some time,” she said.

Jamaican workers have been working on farms in Canada for the last 50 years.