Finally, it’s not the politicians who helped
Published on: Wednesday, March 06, 2019
By: Zam Yusa
PAPAR: After more than a year’s wait, many politicians and political parties’ promises and thousands of Facebook posts about their plight, two poor families in Kampung Marahang, here, finally got the help they wanted to fix their dilapidated house.
Their bamboo house, which often violently swayed during stormy nights or days, would force the families to seek refuge in a neighbour’s home next door.
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Recently, one of the small children there suffered a cut in his shin when his leg slipped through a sudden crack in their home’s old bamboo flooring.
A 36-year-old housewife, who only named herself Vicky, said she had been living in the stilt home, which they could not afford to fix on his husband’s meagre salary, for the past nine years.
“My husband, a mechanic who has stomach ulcers and kidney stone problems, can’t afford to repair our home as he’s a low-income earner,” the mother of four children aged between one and eight told Daily Express.
“Lots of politicians and political parties from both divides before and after last year’s general election visited us at home. They took our details like our names, IC numbers, and so on, but until now, nobody has actually helped. They all made sweet promises to help only.
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“A politician promised us a PPR (Projek Perumahan Rakyat or People’s Housing Project) unit but it remained a promise.
I understand that if they can’t help us in big ways, at least help us out in a small way immediately as we need help quickly. From the looks of it, our home will soon crumble to the ground.
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“A national Malay newspaper also called us to say they wanted to come over to do news on our plight after reading stories on us on Facebook, but that also didn’t materialise.”
Vicky shared the dilapidated house with her 27-year-old sister-in-law, Belinda Imin, and her (Belinda’s) family consisting of five children aged three months to 10 years.
Belinda, whose husband is also a low-income earner working as a truck driver, said after a long wait, NGO Sabah Women’s Paradigm Association came to their aid.
“We really thank them a lot as they’re the only people who have come to help us out after all the many promises by so many people,” she said.
The bamboo house received the first delivery of building materials worth RM2,640, thanks to the association’s help.
The floor was the first part of the house that was fixed as the bamboos made way for plywood brought by the association on a truck.
The association’s Chairperson Winnie Juani said after their first visit to the home on Feb 2, works on repairing the house finally started on Sunday.
“We managed to collect funds totalling RM2,640 from people including (Kawang Assemblyman) Datuk Ghulam (Haidar Khan Bahadar), association members and individuals,” Winnie told Daily Express.
“We bought whatever plywood, nails, wood pieces and zinc roofs that we could get with the funds we’d collected so that instead of waiting long for big funds, we could start right away and hopefully finish sooner.
“With one child already hurt when his leg slipped through a crack in the bamboo floor, we couldn’t wait too long to start work. We had to start now for the sake of their safety.”
Winnie said her association would help anyone regardless of their beliefs and race and expect to do more such projects in the future.
“Now we’re doing the paperwork for a RM200,000 project to build a village community hall in Pitas, where we’ll also work on SK Salimpadon Darat’s hostel,” she said.
“We’ll help fix SK Sook’s canteen in Keningau, where a project to build a hostel for SK Apin-Apin is also in the pipeline.”
Some projects, according to Winnie, take longer to finish but the task to repair Vicky and Belinda’s house will take two weeks to complete with villagers and association members providing free labour.
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