Paner Selvam Subramaniam, his wife Kogilavani Suppan and three children, aged eight months to four years, live in a small rented room on the upper floor of a two-storey house, the ground floor of which has been repurposed into a restaurant.

Paner, who earns RM1,400 a month as a contract security guard at Penang Hospital, pays RM350 a month for the room. It’s all he can afford.

The room is about as big as a queen-sized bed. All five of them sleep on plastic mats on the wooden floor, using unopened diaper packs as pillows, having recently thrown out regular pillows and a small mattress that were infested with bed bugs. Paner attributed this to the leaking roof.

There is no water supply to the room or space for a kitchen. The bathroom is in the compound below and water is fetched from a garden pipe.

The children amuse themselves by running around the room in circles or playing with their second-hand toys.

Paner told FMT he applied for a RM100-a-month flat through the state government about two years ago but had received no response.

He said he could not move the family to any privately-owned flat as a typical owner would demand a RM2,000 deposit.

“At least if we had a home, we could cook,” he said. “We’ve been praying for a nice place to live in for a long time.”

He recently inquired about social welfare aid, only to be told that he did not qualify because he earned more than RM790 a month.

Kogilavani is also not qualified for welfare aid since her marriage to Paner is not recognised as legal. She could not divorce her first husband because she could not afford a lawyer.

They got married at a temple in 2015 and moved from Kulim to Penang in search of a better life. They lived in a shack near a mosque at Jalan Sungai Pinang for about a year before moving to the present place.

Food stall operator R Vairavasundaram has heard of their plight and has been supplying them with hot meals every day.