NEGRIL, Westmoreland – THE Westmoreland police are appealing to the parents who recently abandoned their two children in Negril to turn themselves in to the nearest police station.

The children — Mackeisha Smith 11, and Delano Smith, 7 — were last Friday handed over to the police by citizens, after they were seen begging along the busy Norman Manley Boulevard in Negril.

“A member of the public disclosed that he saw them and inquired why they were out in the street begging and took them to the police,” Corporal Peter Salkey told the Observer West during a telephone interview yesterday.

The parents are facing charges for breaches of the Child Care and Protection Act.

According to the Westmoreland police, the children said they were living in Mandeville, Manchester, with both parents when their mother, Mellissa James, decided to run away from the home, leaving them with their 28-year-old father, ‘Allo’ Smith.

The police said further investigations revealed that the father subsequently relocated to the tourist resort town of Negril, where he lived for an undetermined period with his two children on banks of a canal.

According to the police, they later vacated their makeshift house in order to facilitate the construction of the Negril Fishing Village.

The police said the father subsequently gave the elder child $50 to buy food and told them he was going to Spanish Town, St Catherine.

He has not been seen in the area since.

The children, Salkey said, are now in the care of the state and appear to be in good health.