Home orders senior citizens out

TWO senior citizens will soon be homeless after being evicted from the Senior Park Housing Unit old-age home in Pionierspark after they got married.

Marjorie Judith Ryan-Beukes (77) and Cornelius Beukes (75) married earlier this year and received an eviction letter a month later from the Ministry of Health and Social Services’ Directorate of Social Welfare Services.

According to the letter, the couple were supposed to vacate the home before or on 30 June 2015.

The letter reads that the Senior Park housing units are for low-income senior persons and that the Beukes’ joint monthly income exceeds the income limit of N$4 800 per month for a couple.

“After proper evaluation of the documents, especially the bank statements that were submitted, it becomes clear that Mr Beukes was at the time employed as a pastor at a local congregation and earned an extra amount of N$6 446 and together with Mrs Beukes income of N$3 500, you exceed the income limit per month for a couple,” the eviction letter dated 15 April 2015 reads.

The Beukes’ said they have nowhere else to go and that they pleaded with the ministry and the caretaker to reconsider the eviction.

“We followed all the rules and did what was expected from us, but from what we also saw, this whole eviction is personal,” Ryan-Beukes said, adding that it started when they applied for her husband to stay at the home early this year.

“I have called the ministry more than four times but no one came back to us,” Ryan-Beukes said.

She also said the tension started when her husband was nominated to take over as the caretaker at the home.

“Most of the senior citizens here approached my husband to become the next caretaker because he is a pastor and everyone comes to him for spiritual advice and because almost everyone voted for him, the current caretaker did not take this kindly and the next thing we received this eviction letter,” Ryan-Beukes said.

The caretaker, Seth Majiedt, said he has nothing to say and referred The Namibian to the ministry.

“You have knocked at the wrong door. I have nothing to say. I don’t know anything,” he said.

Beukes echoed his wife’s sentiments that they have nowhere else to go and is appealing to the ministry to let them say on in the old-age home.

“I am a retired pastor. I don’t have an income anymore. We have nowhere else to go. All we want to do is to live in peace in our last days. This eviction is really adding a lot of stress on us.

“All my life I served people and worked for them. I don’t know what harm I did anyone that my wife and I have to be thrown out like this,” he said.

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