MINISTER of Human Services and Social Security, Ms. Jennifer Webster has said the issue of getting people of unsound mind off the streets is not something that can be tackled by her ministry alone.

Answering questions at a media briefing on Monday, she said, while her ministry is often looked at whenever the matter arises, it is only fulfilling its mandate of social services.
According to her, it is a mental health issue and, as such, falls under the Ministry of Health.
Webster said, although her ministry has been doing a lot to deal with those cases, there is still much that needs to be done and that requires collaboration between hers and the Health Ministry.
She said, at the level of the latter ministry, there is a mental health programme that it is implementing.
She added that, on many occasions, her ministry has tried to get the persons off the streets and many of them are accommodated at the Night Shelter in East La Penitence. However, moving them there is often short lived because they often return to the streets.
The minister also used the occasion to point to the reality of the very persons operating on the pavement in front of her ministry in Stabroek.
She maintained that her ministry has never given up the fight to ensure that normal citizens who use the public thoroughfares do so freely and feel safe but reminded that the collaboration is important.
According to her, the problem has to be dealt with through having those persons medically checked by a psychiatrist and her ministry does not have such a professional in its sector.
The Ministry of Human Services and Social Security, too, has been criticised for not adequately dealing with the persons of unsound mind the homeless.
Recently a teenage male student of a city secondary school was attacked and injured by a man of unsound mind.