Fatimah (third right) speaks to Chieng, who is pictured with her grandson.
SIBU (Sept 21): An elderly couple and their five-year-old grandson living at a rented dilapidated house at Jalan Tong Sang here are in dire need of help, including financial assistance, says Dato Sri Fatimah Abdullah.
The Minister of Women, Childhood and Community Wellbeing Development called for the Welfare Department to trace the whereabouts of the boy’s mother to have his identification documents sorted out so that he could go to school.
Fatimah, who visited the family yesterday, said the elderly couple had lost contact with the boy’s mother.
“We need to find the mother, using whatever means, including through social media. Hopefully, she would approach us, and we could talk.
“We want to save the boy, we want to protect him. We can suggest a more conducive and safer place for him to live in and that he should go to school to ensure that he would have a future,” she said when met yesterday.
Fatimah added that the boy’s mother was still around somewhere, and hopefully she would come home to sort things out.
“Until all avenues are used up, we have no choice but to intervene,” she said, adding that it was not known if the boy even had a birth certificate.
She suggested that the couple, Ting Chiew Tung, 78, and his wife Chieng Suk Hung, 70, be placed at Rumah Sri Kenangan, which they hopefully would agree to.
The couple, who hail from Sarikei, receives RM500 in monthly assistance from the Welfare Department. Ting is the sole breadwinner of the family.
The couple lives in a dilapidated house without electricity.
Fatimah, meanwhile, called upon members of the public to inform the Welfare Department should they know of cases like this so that the authorities could quickly act on it.
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