Bed bugs and water supply woes at the Golden Age Home in Lautoka have been resolved with the help of the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC) and FRIEND Fiji that provided over $12,000 worth of assistance to the residence.
Together, the non-profit organisations answered the pleas of administrators of the home where the pests had infested residents living quarters while their water supply was affected during heavy downpours.
FRIEND Fiji director Sashi Kiran said the bed bugs issue was addressed with replacement mattresses given by FWCC.
“During the pandemic, we were told that the bed bugs was a big issue so then the FWCC was able to provide a fair bit of mattresses with leather covers for their age care and then throughout the pandemic we had been trying our best to support the centre,” she said.
“When their budget was cut, they had issues with food supply and resources like PPEs, adult diapers so we did our best to standby and provide the support that was needed.
“Then recently, during the floods we found out that they had massive issues in providing water to the entire residents so then again we called FWCC to organise and donate a water tank for the home.”
FWCC coordinator Shamima Ali said the assistance was part of the ongoing humanitarian work that the centre and a coalition of NGOs had been providing for COVID-19 affected communities.
“This time FRIEND had asked for us to collaborate in this donation and we have had a lot of donors and support donating to the centre for our COVID response and this is one of the places we saw we could use those funds best,” she said.
“Particularly, we know that our hospitals, our Government and other institutions like women’s and children’s homes are under-resourced so we wanted to help out.”
Golden Age Home board co-chairperson Rajnesh Charan said they had a lot of issues especially with water cuts this year.
“We have 50 residents that were suffering because of the frequent water cuts we were getting,” she said.
“So we were truly grateful to FWCC and FRIEND Fiji for stepping in and helping us get water directly to our residents.”
