Subscribe in a reader | Subscribe by Email Perhaps our members/friends in Johor can do something – spend time, provide assistance in registering association for him. For more info, you have to contact NST via email news@nst.com.my or call them (http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/corpcontact.htm)
Muhunthan brings home the homeless, elderly http://www.nst.com.my/NST/Article/vArt?did=20070409074348 E-mail : news@nst.com.my By : Lau Meisan
2007/04/09 Muhunthan chatting with one of the people he brought home. Over the years, he has brought home 14 people.
JOHOR BARU: When her husband died, M. Vengammah came here from Perak to look for her son.
But he cast her off, she said. With nowhere else to go, the 76-year-old woman slept at night on the five-foot way of a shoplot in Jalan Skudai.
Lorry driver S. Muhunthan found her and took her in.
Over the last three years, Muh- unthan has brought home with him 14 elderly and homeless people.
Some, like Vengammah, he found living on the streets of Johor Baru. Others were patients deserted in hospitals by their families. Now they all live in a small single-storey terrace house in Taman Johor Jaya, a mostly blue-collar area, looked after by Muhunthan’s wife, V Radamanai.
“I don’t mind having a few extra mouths to feed,” said Muhunthan, 34.
His words understate the size of the commitment he has made.
He spends about half of his RM5,000 monthly income feeding and clothing them, and gets help from friends to meet expenses such as the RM600 rent for the house.
Muhunthan owns and drives a two-tonne lorry. He has four young children, and his 68-year-old father, L. Subramaniam, lives with them in another house in Plentong.
In the living room of the Taman Johor Jaya house, there is space for nine people to sleep. Seven of his homeless dependents sleep on camp beds, while his wife and a six-year-old son occupy double bunk beds in a corner.
The rest sleep in the other two rooms in the house. The dining table is placed in the porch, where they have their meals together.
The keeper of a nearby Chinese temple in the neighbourhood tries to help, bringing a little food whenever he can.
“You don’t see many people like Muhunthan around,” said the man, who gave his name only as Ah Choy.
Muhunthan said: “I will do this for as long as I can afford it. I don’t want to go to the Welfare Department for help because I can still pay for their meals and expenses.
“I don’t need any financial help.
“If you want, you can provide food and spend some time with them but please don’t donate money.
“I don’t want others to say that I am making use of these people for financial gain,” he said.
It began three years ago, when a friend who worked in a charity home in Kajang, Selangor, asked him for help.
The home was too crowded and needed someone to take care of some of the homeless people living there.
After a lengthy discussion with his wife, his children and his father, the family agreed to take in three elderly people.
“I told my friend, as long as they didn’t mind eating what we eat and sleeping in makeshift beds, I would be more than willing to take them in.”
He did it partly because both his father and his wife were born lame.
“Taking care of the less fortunate and less able-bodied is part of my daily life,” he said.
He has even tried finding family members of the homeless by highlighting their plight in the Tamil newspapers.
So far, none has come forward for these dependents, aged between 52 and 83.
For the future, Muhunthan is thinking of getting some land in Plentong to build a proper charity home, and is applying for a licence from the Welfare Department.
Johor Baru Welfare Department officer Manayi Ibrahim urged him to register his home as a non-profit organisation.
“He can also try and get a grant from the government to lighten his financial burden,” Manayi said.
Johor Jaya state assemblyman Tan Cher Pok, who paid a visit to the home yesterday, urged Muhunthan to set up an association to better manage the home and register it with the Welfare Department.
