ZOMBA (MaraviPost) — Zomba residents have expressed worry over increased number of mental patients who are loitering around the city thereby causing fear and anxiety among citizens.
Some of the mental patients according to residents are ruthless and a threat to citizens due to their violent nature while others remain a public nuisance due to their unbecoming conduct and behaviour in the eyes of the public.
The increased stray mental patients also comes as a strange phenomenon to Zomba city dwellers considering that the city has a major mental hospital designed to keep such people.
The citizens have however demanded that city authorities must contain the situation as soon as possible to ensure that there is human sanity in the city.
However in an interview Director of Health and Social Services at the Zomba City Council Gomezgani Nyasulu said the problem emanates from the fact that his office remain underfunded to manage such issues.
“Zomba city is more like the headquarters for mental cases, so all the mental cases from across the country are referred to Zomba Mental Hospital so those health workers at the facility when they see some improvement and due to increased pressure for care, they discharge people who probably may not have fully recovered.
“You may appreciate that as a city council per se we do not directly get funding for health issues so if we don’t get direct access to funding for health, it becomes a challenge for us to meet a those demands” said Nyasulu
In the same regard Eastern Region Police spokesperson Thomeck Nyaude said that as police in collaboration with health personnel at Zomba mental hospital, always do their part in containing mental patients who may cause havoc in the city.
