Mentally ill people still roam Accra streets

Accra, April 13, GNA - Prior to the climax of the 50th anniversary celebrations on March 6, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) decided to embark on an exercise to rid the city of the mentally ill on the streets.

Unfortunately, more than one month after the celebrations, the exercise has still not taken place.

Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on Friday, Mr. John Appiah, Public Relations Officer of the AMA, said the exercise could not come off because the Ghana@50 Secretariat which had promised to provide some 800,000 million cedis for a cleanup and the exercise to rid the city of lunatics failed to do so.

He said a committee comprising AMA, Ministry of Health and Department of Social Welfare was set up by the government to be responsible for the exercise but since the funds were not available, there was not much the committee could do.

Mr. Appiah said if the exercise had taken place, the lunatics would have been taken to the Accra Psychiatric Hospital and the funds used for their maintenance such as clothing, medicine and feeding. He said as of now, the AMA did not have money for such an operation and added that if the Ministry of Finance would give them money for the exercise, it would be carried out.

The Public Affairs Officer of Ghana@50 Secretariat, Mr Henry Okyne said before the celebrations, the Secretariat gave AMA nine billion cedis for sanitization exercises, which included the confinement of the mentally ill on the streets of Accra. It was therefore unable to allocate more money for that exercise.