A disabled couple has to crawl their way down from their flat every morning - because of foot-dragging by the management in fixing a faulty lift button.

A Thangarajoo, 44, who is wheelchair-bound, said he lives on the first floor of Block C, which is a block specially for disabled families, at PPR Taman Wahyu 2 in Kuala Lumpur.

As the lift button for his floor is not working, Rajoo and his wife, M Valli, 44, have to crawl down two flights of staircases every morning to get to work.

"I would be able to bear with it if the staircase is clean - but it's filthy. There are all kinds of things, like urine, cat faeces, food leftovers and spit," said Thangarajoo, a former national paralympic tennis player who is widely known as Rajoo.

A disabled couple has to crawl their way down from their flat every morning - because of foot-dragging by the management in fixing a faulty lift button.A Thangarajoo, 44, who is wheelchair-bound, said he lives on the first floor of Block C, which is a block specially for disabled families, at PPR Taman Wahyu 2 in Kuala Lumpur.Read more here: http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/321092

Posted by Malaysiakini on Wednesday, 25 November 2015

Rajoo said damaged lifts were normally quickly fixed as there would be a torrent of complaints from residents at the 17-storey public housing flat. However, as this was only a damaged button on the first floor, the management does not see any urgency in fixing it.

There was also a new lift at his block, but it was not functional yet.

Rajoo said the lift he uses daily was damaged two days before Deepavali and he had been complaining about it to the management on a daily basis.

"There was once when we complained to the lift operator and they said it's only on the first floor, why can't you just walk down?

"If it was not for our niece helping then, when it was the school holidays, we wouldn't have been able to go to work," said Valli.

Rajoo and Valli run a food stall at the Malaysiakini building.

For a week now, Rajoo and Valli would crawl down the staircase and their niece would then help to carry their wheelchairs and other necessities down for them.

Rajoo and his wife have lived at the flat for some nine years and they said the breaking down of the lift has been a constant problem and that this period is the longest that they've had to crawl down the staircase because of the faulty button.

"Once, when the lift broke down, there was a woman on the 13th floor who was ill and needed to go to the hospital.

"The ambulance came but they, the paramedics, couldn't climb up all 13 floors to bring her down and she later died," Rajoo said.