I speak about the appalling response to maintenance issues for social housing tenants in my electorate of Charlestown. I acknowledge that a new CEO has recently been appointed to the Land and Housing Corporation [LAHC] and I am looking forward to meeting with him to discuss how to fix the issues I am about to raise. These are only a couple of the examples of what are clearly inappropriate responses to public housing maintenance in this State. Week after week I am inundated with complaints from constituents battling with the Land and Housing Corporation to have their maintenance issues dealt with satisfactorily. Some of the matters have been outstanding for months with little or in some cases no action from the Land and Housing Corporation. My office receives phone calls and emails from people who have requested maintenance on their property and have been waiting for months, sometimes even years, for the Government and its agencies to act.

In fact, only last week my office received over 10 calls from constituents needing assistance with maintenance that had not been dealt with properly by the department up until then. Out of the many inquiries Ireceive, maintenance issues are the most frequent reason for people contacting my office. Recently, an elderly resident contacted my office because she needed new carpet in her property. She has had more than four subcontractors attend her home, each determining the carpet to be a trip hazard. Despite this, she is still waiting for something to be done. It has been 14 months since this was first raised with the LAHC maintenance team. The standard line she receives from LAHC staff is that they are negotiating with the contractor and that they need to do the costings. How long does LAHC need to get some costings for a carpet?

Another elderly resident who contacted my office had requested urgent attention to her bathroom. She had recently had a fall and had been given a letter from her GP to give to LAHC outlining the circumstances of her fall. My constituent explained that the light switch in her bathroom is behind the door. In order to turn her light on she has to enter the bathroom, close the door, then switch the light on. Obviously, this creates a very dangerous situation for her, especially at night when she cannot see where the light switch is. My constituent called the maintenance team a number of weeks after submitting her GP's letter, only to be told there was no record of the correspondence and that she now had to wait another 28 days before anyone would even attend the property to work out the scope of worksfor a light switch behind a door. Due to the seriousness of the matter she called my office for assistance. Upon our inquiries we were told by LAHC that this matter was considered only minor. It is appalling to think that someone who is at risk of a fall in their own home would need to wait 28days before anyone from LAHC would even attend the property to have a look at the problem.

Another of my constituents, Suzanne, first contacted my office in April 2017 about outstanding maintenance work needed on her property. Following intervention and representations from my office, Suzanne was given a target completion date of 30 June 2017. LAHC told us the works were eventually completed by the end of July 2017, three months after contacting my office. Unfortunately, Suzanne contacted my office again in August 2018 to tell us that a number of the maintenance issues were not, in fact, completed in 2017 when LAHC told us they had been and, despite further intervention from my office, the issues still remain unresolved more than a year later.

How can this Government remain silent and allow residents of social housing to wait for over a year without any action from LAHC? My office has spoken to hundreds of constituents in similar circumstances. Mould, sewer overflows, bird lice, no security screens, no ramp access for people in wheelchairs, no bathroom modifications for people with disabilities so they can bathe in dignitythese are common issues facing the social housing tenants of Charlestown. I am disgusted by how some of the most vulnerable people in our society are being treated by a government agency and it is outrageous that this is being allowed to happen. It is clear that the Minister and the Government, through their rampant outsourcing and privatisation agenda, are happy to wipe their hands of any responsibility. It is absolutely shameful. We should be supporting these people, not treating them as second-class citizens. People who access housing support from the Government should not be forgotten about and left without answers when they report issues to the department responsible for maintenance.