House discusses home
Published:Wednesday | April 6, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Daraine Luton, Senior Staff Reporter
Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller has urged State Minister Robert Montague to use the first two verses of Psalm 41 as a guiding light to his policy on the elderly.
The comments, made during a contribution in the House of Representatives yesterday, come in the light of a Sunday Gleaner exposé on the conditions in which residents of The Golden Age Home in Vineyard Town, Kingston, live.
"Blessed is he that considereth the poor: The Lord will deliver him in time of trouble. The Lord will preserve him, and keep him alive; and he shall be blessed upon the earth: and thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his enemies," the psalm says.
The Sunday Gleaner exposé, which included disturbing pictures and an online video at www.jamaica-gleaner.com/videos, revealed that in some instances elderly residents are subjected to a mass bathing each morning. They are stripped, lathered then sprayed with water from a hose.
The news team witnessed a number of severely disabled residents spend most of their day wallowing on dirty floors with flies all around.
The opposition leader suggested that the conditions at the Vineyard Town home which were uncovered by the Sunday Gleaner team were not new to infirmaries.
"I started to pay special attention to the golden age homes because something came upon me to begin to look at them, and then I had someone who went across the country visiting and reporting to me, and some of the conditions were really very terrible," Simpson Miller said.
Yesterday, Montague, the minister with responsibility for local government, told Parliament the administration had asked Pearl Barrett, a former inspector of poor, to visit infirmaries.
Montague was responding to a query from the opposition spokesman on local government Colin Fagan on whether the Government would address the House on the report carried in The Sunday Gleaner.
The local government minister said Barrett "has gone around and has looked at the infirmary and she is compiling a report".
"This Government that I am a part of believes and is committed to the proper care and treatment of the elderly," the minister said.
Meanwhile, Simpson Miller has urged Montague to conduct an audit of staff and other resources at infirmaries and golden age homes across the island.
She has also recommended that the Government provide the homes with the necessary financial support for them to function.
"No matter what, they are our responsibility and it does not matter who is in power," she said.