Family in shoebox seeks better life
GEORGE TOWN: A poor family of five is appealing for help from any quarter so they can get out of the desperate living conditions they are in.
Paner Selvam Subramaniam, his wife Kogilavani Suppan and three children, aged eight months to four years, live in a small rented room on the upper floor of a two-storey house, the ground floor of which has been repurposed into a restaurant.
Paner, who earns RM1,400 a month as a contract security guard at Penang Hospital, pays RM350 a month for the room. It’s all he can afford.
The room is about as big as a queen-sized bed. All five of them sleep on plastic mats on the wooden floor, using unopened diaper packs as pillows, having recently thrown out regular pillows and a small mattress that were infested with bed bugs. Paner attributed this to the leaking roof.
There is no water supply to the room or space for a kitchen. The bathroom is in the compound below and water is fetched from a garden pipe.
The children amuse themselves by running around the room in circles or playing with their second-hand toys.
Paner told FMT he applied for a RM100-a-month flat through the state government about two years ago but had received no response.
He said he could not move the family to any privately-owned flat as a typical owner would demand a RM2,000 deposit.
“At least if we had a home, we could cook,” he said. “We’ve been praying for a nice place to live in for a long time.”
He recently inquired about social welfare aid, only to be told that he did not qualify because he earned more than RM790 a month.
Kogilavani is also not qualified for welfare aid since her marriage to Paner is not recognised as legal. She could not divorce her first husband because she could not afford a lawyer.
They got married at a temple in 2015 and moved from Kulim to Penang in search of a better life. They lived in a shack near a mosque at Jalan Sungai Pinang for about a year before moving to the present place.
Food stall operator R Vairavasundaram has heard of their plight and has been supplying them with hot meals every day. - FMT
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