LETTERS: Many of us are spending more time at home due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, some are living in huts.
The New Straits Times and others recently highlighted the plight of a family living in a hut in Pasir Mas, Kelantan. The mother, 47, and her four children have been staying in the house provided by a relative after her breadwinner husband abandoned them.
The front of the house was in a miserable state, had no room or demarcations, just one common space with four walls and a zinc roof. The floor was on raised stilts with a PVC floor mat on the porch.
The zinc roof had seen better days and would offer no respite during the hot sunny days, and when it rains, it would wet the whole place. The house may collapse at any time.
The children do not have birth certificates and identity cards due to the ignorance of the family. So the children have not been going to school. The Pasir Mas member of parliament, who went to present food baskets and cash donation, was touched by the family's plight and has vowed to help by upgrading the house.
In another case, the media highlighted the plight of Yip Foong Yin in his 70s living alone in a shack on the fringes of a housing area in Ipoh without piped water and electricity. He grows fruits and vegetables and cooks using twigs and branches to start a fire.
He collects rainwater for washing, bathing and drinking. How the shack provides him shelter during the hot and wet season and from animals and predators is mystifying.
There are many more cases of people living in abject poverty. The homeless sleep on cardboard boxes and are exposed to the elements. They have to make do with bare necessities.
Their homes have no electricity or water supply. Single mothers whose husbands have deserted them stay in store rooms, sheds and abandoned buildings with their children.
Old and aged men and women, who have been abandoned by their children and have been left to fend for themselves, stay in dilapidated dwellings.
It is sad to see people living in such pathetic conditions.
Government agencies or welfare organisations should send them to shelter homes. While it is heartwarming that kind people have come forward to help, everyone should have a decent home.
Therefore, eradicating poverty should be the ultimate goal in our quest for a better quality of life.
Samuel Yesuiah
Seremban, Negri Sembilan
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times