ST JAMES, Jamaica — Local government minister Desmond McKenzie has come to the defence of health minister Christopher Tufton who has faced questions from within the Government about his commitment to penalising those who abandon elderly and infirmed relatives.

Government Senator Charles Sinclair questioned, during last week’s official opening of a men’s ward at the St James Infirmary, if Tufton is still committed to the task.

“I heard Minister Tufton speaking about it and him kind of, the other day, made a comment that cause me to believe he kind of pull back a little bit, probably reassessing and looking at how it can best be worked out,” said Sinclair.

However McKenzie assured him that the issue is still on the Government’s radar.

“Is not that Minister Tufton has gone soft, we are working on it and we’re going to be announcing shortly the steps that are going to be taken to ensure that those who have their relatives in these facilities, who have abandoned them, take responsibility,” McKenzie vowed.

For years the State has struggled with people abandoning relatives at publicly run infirmaries and health facilities. At hospitals, the cases typically spike over the holidays.

In February 2021, following a tour of the field hospital at Falmouth in Trelawny Tufton said the government had engaged the services of a lawyer and individuals who abandon their relatives at public hospitals could soon be prosecuted.

But in December last year, he said the government was rethinking its approach after receiving advice from the attorney general’s department. A “course of action” he said then, would be determined this year.

Wading into the debate last week Sinclair, who is an attorney, is adamant that the full force of the law must be brought to bear on those who abandon vulnerable relatives.

“I’m a stickler for laws; that is my profession, I practise law,” he said. “Where children can maintain or participate in the maintenance of their parents and their grandparents, the law must apply to them and they must participate.”

Sinclair, who is also Councillor for the Montego Bay North East Division, said, if needed, action must be taken at the municipal level.

“Where we see that ability exists … we must take the course that the law says we are to take under the Maintenance Act to ensure that even if they can’t do everything, they must participate,” he said of relatives who have the ability to help but chose not to do so.

In assuring Sinclair that the issue is being addressed, McKenzie explained that the local government and health ministries have long worked together and will continue to do so. There is a memorandum of understanding in place, he said, under which individuals abandoned at public hospitals are transferred to government-run infirmaries.

“Between 2016 to now we have been working with the ministry of health in retrofitting infirmaries to take social cases out of our hospitals. Because people carry their relatives to the hospital, leave them there, abandon them and the State can’t put them on the road. So they remain in the hospital because they are not considered to be registered poor,” he explained.

Sinclair appealed to those who have not kept in touch with relatives at these facilities to get involved in their lives.

“You don’t have to participate in money, you can participate in effort. So you come here and you spend a day and you share with them and you take care of them and you help to change clothing and you comb them hair and you read them stories and all of that. That is critical to life. The maintenance don’t have to be money, it doesn’t have to be all money,” he urged.