Hold children who turn their back on parents accountable

Deputy president of the Senate, Charles Sinclair, wants the country’s Maintenance Act enforced on children who have turned their backs on their parents and grandparents in infirmaries.

Sinclair wants them held accountable for the care and protection of the parents including those they have allowed to live on the streets and to depend on the benevolence of others, including the state to care for them, especially in cases where these children are in a position to assist in the resuscitation.

“Some persons who end up here (at the infirmary), their family who are out there, able-bodied with two hands, two feet, the capacity to improve themselves because they have the energy, [have] turned their backs on their relatives who end up staying in this facility,” said Sinclair at a ceremony to open the new male ward at the St. James Infirmary on Wednesday, February 15.

“There is a duty that many persons forget, and I keep mentioning it wherever it comes up appropriately in our various committee meetings, that children have a duty, it’s not only parents who have a duty, but children have a duty to maintain their parents and their grandparents,” the St. James Municipal Corporation, Montego Bay North East division councillor noted.

MUCH EASIER

He said when families are involved in helping to care for their infirm parents it makes the process of reintegration much easier.

“I am making an appeal to them that they must not forget because those persons participated in their own personal development over the years,” the government senator pleaded.

Sinclair argued that 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. He noted too that the enforcement of that law is the responsibility of municipal corporations on those whose relatives are residents in the infirmaries.

“I think the responsibility falls on us at the municipal corporation where we see that ability exists, we must take the course that the law says, we are to, under the Maintenance Act, ensure that even if they can’t do everything, they must participate,” he insisted.

“And you don’t have to participate in money, you can participate in efforts [where] 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 their hair and you read them stories and all of that. That is critical to life and so the maintenance don’t have to be money, it doesn’t have to be all money,” Sinclair reasoned.

“I want to say in relation to persons, whether here or persons who have to use the Refuge of Hope because it is potentially possible for facilities like this to be a temporary arrangement and that persons can be reintegrated when the circumstances of their family may improve,” he added.