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Neighbours are rallying around disabled couple Barbara and Arthur Broome, who look doomed to spend a second Christmas stuck on separate floors of their Takanini house.
Conifer Grove hairdresser Susan Knol has offered to give the couple a Christmas haircut as a token of support as they wait for the Ministry of Health to install a new lift in their house. The ministry has rejected the only two bids received in its latest tender for a lift to replace one that was removed on November 20 last year.
Ministry duty manager David Chrisp said most lift suppliers who were invited to bid did not do so, and the two that did offered lifts that were too small.
Wheelchair-bound Mrs Broome, 77, has multiple sclerosis and sleeps upstairs in the house, where she has a specially adapted bathroom.
Mr Broome, 76, returned home from hospital last year with terminal cancer. He stays downstairs so that he can get to hospital quickly in an emergency.
The ministry told the Herald on November 29 last year that it would replace the lift in the house the next day. But its agent, Accessable, failed to install a lift and was eventually replaced by another company, Opus, which has taken months to prepare options and hold tenders to seek lift suppliers.
It will be 400 days on Christmas Day since the previous lift was removed.
Papakura resident Elaine King, who rang Papakura Mayor Calum Penrose about the case this week, said the whole saga was "just not good enough. We've got to do something, but what?"
Mrs Knol, who offered to cut the couple's hair, said her elderly parents in Britain were being swamped with help from the community after being hit by floods, and she wanted to do the same for the Broomes.
Mr Chrisp said the ministry had gone back to Mrs Broome in the past two days, after its tender failed, and suggested buying a new lift "off the shelf" rather than holding another tender.
