Old & alone in JB nursing home

By Benita Aw Yeong
In A nursing home in Johor Baru, a 90-year-old woman waits patiently for a visit from her family.
Her memory isn't the sharpest.
When asked if she has had visitors in the year since she moved into City Heart Care nursing home, she was silent.
The assistant admin manager of the home, known only as Ms Abi, shook her head in response to this reporter's question.
Madam Kong A W is one of 14 Singaporeans who live at the nursing home, said the owner of the home, Mr Jeremy Yeo.
Most enjoy visits from their families who live across the Causeway. The nursing home is a 30-minute drive from the Woodlands Checkpoint.
A typical nursing home in Singapore charges about $1,000 a month for each patient.
A check with four JB nursing homes indicated monthly fees ranging between $610 and $800 for a month's stay.
Mr Yeo, a Malaysian in his late fifties, claimed that Madam Kong's family stopped paying for her nursing home bills after her son died.
Said Ms Abi: "She (Madam Kong) has not asked about her family, and we have not told her. To her, we (the nurses and caregivers) are her family."
When The New Paper on Sunday visited the nursing home two weeks ago, Madam Kong was chattering incoherently to nurses in a mixture of Malay and Hokkien.
Around her in the room, other patients watched TV from their beds.
Outside the window in the yard, a visitor, a woman in her 60s, was feeding a patient.
Madam Kong's face lit up when she was offered some traditional Chinese New Year peanut cookies from a roommate, a Chinese Malaysian in her sixties.
"Kamsia, kamsia (thank you in Hokkien)," she said.
Said Mr Yeo: "I cannot put her out on the streets, can I? It's not right to throw her out."
While he said that her case is exceptional, he also revealed that he has "two or three" other similar cases involving patients whose relatives stop paying for them to be kept in the nursing home. These other patients are Malaysian, he added.
Mr Yeo said Madam Kong was first admitted to the nursing home on June 29 last year.
As she is bedridden and requires a higher level of care, her stay at the home should cost $800 a month.
He said that Madam Kong's son and daughter-in-law paid $900 for her first month's stay there, and then only $400 the following month.
But soon after, Madam Kong's daughter-in-law called the home to inform Mr Yeo that Madam Kong's son had died.
He said: "The only time I saw her and her husband was when Madam Kong was first admitted.
"She called some time later to say that her husband had died, and that she had no money to make any further payments."