MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Mayor of Mandeville Brenda Ramsay is calling for legislation to be crafted to hold relatives of mentally persons accountable for letting them loose on the streets.

The mayor, who was responding to concerns here about a sudden increase of mentally ill persons on the streets, said: “Somewhere along the line we’ll have to see how we can get legislation so that they can take responsibility for caring for these people. It’s something we must look at because the State cannot provide for all of these persons. We have some on the streets (whose) relatives are right here…”

A recent Jamaica Observer Central article reported that mentally ill persons were being turned away from the Mandeville-based Ebenezer Home for the Mentally Ill as the numbers were overwhelming for the institution’s three staff members. The privately run home, the only one of its kind in Central Jamaica, offers temporary shelter for the mentally ill.

Since the story broke, concerns have been raised as to which organisation is responsible for taking the mentally ill off the streets.

Acting Secretary Manager David Harris told the Observer Central at the time that the council had no provision in its budget for removing mentally ill persons from the streets. However, he said the mayor had instructed that a letter be written to the Southern Regional Health Authority (SRHA) on the matter, after the subject was broached in an April 26 Local Board of Health meeting. Harris said that at the meeting, the parish’s chief public health inspector said his office did not have the resources to effect such removals.

He said the letter was sent to the SRHA as “we’d want to find out what steps are being taken, either from their level or the ministry’s level, to make additional funds available for this increasing problem in Mandeville”.

But Wednesday last Mayor Ramsay told the Observer Central that the Council and the SRHA have “joint jurisdiction”.

“As city fathers, we naturally have jurisdiction over what happens in our town or parish, but we’re not health practitioners, so there has to be collaboration between (us) …,” she said, noting that further discussions were scheduled for the said Wednesday.

“But people keep asking what we are doing about the issue. Let us not forget that they are migratory; now you see them, now you don’t, and we do not have the authority to just take these people and lock them away… Our responsibility is to see that they’re not abused,” she said.

Administrators at the Ebenezer Home have said that while they would like to get more help from the Government, the Manchester business community must also step up to the plate.

The home’s operations manager Paulette Wheeler said business people “will ring us up and complain that there’s a mentally ill person outside their shops, but they don’t do anything to help”, she said.