SEREMBAN: A poverty-stricken single mother from Kampung Pasir Mas in Rantau here is very thankful to the Pakatan Harapan government for extending assistance to her.
I. Thailamah Vasantha, 55, lives in a dilapidated house with a roof that has collapsed for many years, just about 1.2 kilometres from Rantau town. The state of the house makes it a “magnet” for insects and animals to come in.
The Rantau-born woman said she has been living in the house, which belongs to her late mother, alone for more than 10 years.
“I was renting a small house before this and ever since I started to stay here, no one came forward to help me even though I had requested for some welfare assistance… sometimes I will sit at the corner and cry thinking about my situation,” she poured her heart out to Bernama.
The mother of two said she did not want to trouble her children as they lived far away and had their own families to run.
She had hoped that the previous Barisan Nasional government and its assemblyman for Rantau, who was also the menteri besar of the state then, would have looked into her plight but felt its leaders were “more interested in looking after themselves”.
Sharing her most horrifying experiences, she said there was a day where a snake passed by her head while sleeping and frogs were common in her bedroom as the old broken wooden house was badly damaged with no locks.
“When it rains especially at night, I cannot sleep at all because of leaks… I will be trembling at one corner of the house until the rain stops and even after the rain stops, I cannot sleep on my torn mattress because it gets wet too,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes.
Being a woman, it pains her to have to use a toilet and bathroom with no doors and pipes for water supply.
“My squatting toilet bowl has no flush and I use dirty water from the nearby river and sometimes rain water to survive. I use these water sources for my cooking too,” she said.
As for her daily meals, she eats rice with curry or fried rice whenever there is extra money, or else porridge and bread are the only affordable meals, everyday.
Adding to her problems, the factory worker said she has been suffering high white blood cell count for more than a year which led to frequent fainting and giddiness, particularly while working.
“Last time, I used to get medical assistance for my health condition but the past few years they have stopped my routine medical check-ups and due to that I’m not able to work nowadays,” she said.
Noticing her hardship, the current (Pakatan Harapan) government came to her aid by providing welfare assistance and to repair the broken house.
Heaving a sigh of relief, Thailamah said the house is getting a new roof and planks plus a proper toilet after a decade, all because of a new government in the state as well as a the federal level.
“Now, the house is being repaired under the assistance of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s private secretary R Suresh Kumar and I really hope we will have a new leader (assemblyman) to lead Rantau,” she said, adding that the Pakatan Harapan candidate Dr S Streram would continue helping her and the people around the village to ease their burden. – Bernama
