I AM a blind and deaf woman. In 1999, I had to move out of my hostel located next to the Tun Hussein Onn National Eye Hospital.

The hostel was built by the Malaysian Association for the Blind (MAB) with funds from the Rotary Club.

The land was needed to expand the hospital.

A few of us managed to move in with a friend, Leong, who is also blind.

He was kind enough to offer free accommodation to five blind girls who were also affected by the move.

I have been getting aid from the Welfare Department since 1999. However, that aid was stopped in July last year.

I went to the Welfare Office in Petaling Jaya to find out the reason and was told that my residential address was in Kuala Lumpur and so my name was now with the Kuala Lumpur Welfare Office.

Puzzled by this, as I had not changed residence, I went to the MAB office and asked the deputy director to telephone the Kuala Lumpur Welfare Office.

He was informed that my name was not on their list and that I should go to the Petaling Jaya Welfare Office to clarify matters instead.

Both the departments told me that my name was not in either of their lists.

I had to move from office to office like a ping-pong ball.

All this occurred despite the fact that the welfare officer from the Petaling Jaya branch had visited me in Leong’s house in Section 14 in Petaling Jaya and had even interviewed me there.

Seven months have passed and this matter has not been resolved. I don’t have enough money for food and have to share what food Leong and my friends can provide.

My only source of income is from the massage services I provide but that too isn’t much as there are communication problems between me and the clients because of my disabilities.

I have a disabled father who needs a walker to move about. My elderly mother is crippled by osteoarthritis. I used to help them whenever I went home to my kampung.

But now I can’t even go home because I don’t have enough money.

So I approached a good friend whom I have known for 30 years to assist me in this matter.

She contacted the Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya welfare offices. They could not give her satisfactory answers as to why they had pushed me around.

They claimed that I had moved to Kuala Lumpur as they had a record which gave my address as No. 15 Jalan Tun Sambanthan 4, Kuala Lumpur.

My friend visited this address and found it to be a shophouse used as a motorcycle repair shop and a hair salon. How could that be my residential address?

Why can’t the two branches contact each other to try and resolve this matter instead of pushing me from branch to branch?

The Petaling Jaya branch knew that I was still in Section 14, Petaling Jaya, and yet they stopped giving me aid.

The Kuala Lumpur Welfare Office, on the other hand, did not bother to check the address. Who gave my address as No. 15, Jalan Tun Sambanthan 4, Kuala Lumpur?

Surely the Welfare Department would have on record who did this as it was the Kuala Lumpur Welfare Office that registered the aid application on July 2 last year.

Is this what a caring government department does?

How am I to live now? What do I do?

Source: NST – January 7, 2008