How much worse can it get for the victims of Hurricane Katrina?

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How much worse can it get for the victims of Hurricane Katrina?

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When will the Bush administration take responsibility for their mishandling of this tragedy?  - The Angryindian

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BATON ROUGE, La. - Louisiana wants thousands of state and local
government workers to send back $10 million in unemployment pay they
received while still collecting regular pay after Hurricane Katrina.

Department of Labor
was the main reason the 5,439 ineligible workers were able to collect
up to $258 a week, Legislative Auditor Steve Theriot said.

Administrative workers with the City of New Orleans received the
most money with 2,233 wrongfully collecting $4.3 million. There were
1,638 state workers, many with the state Department of Health and
Hospitals, who got $2.7 million.

The money was a small portion of the overall $560 million the
department pay out in unemployment benefits to public and private
workers in the four months after Katrina.

With residents spread nationwide and difficult to contact, state
labor officials suspended the requirement for unemployment applicants
to contact the department weekly to verify they are looking for jobs
and to report any earnings, said assistant Labor Secretary Marianne
Sullivan.

She said the agency suspended the call-in rule for 12 weeks based on
meetings with officials from the governor's office, the Louisiana
Association of Business and Industry, the state AFL-CIO and the Council
for a Better Louisiana.

The department has gotten back $3.3 million of improper payments so
far, mostly from unused benefit debit cards. It seems unlikely the
state will get all the money.