Abu Dhabi: A man in his 50s suffered a heart attack after he climbed the stairs in his building following a breakdown of the elevator.
The landlord had failed to fix the elevator for two months.
The Kuwaiti citizen has been in intensive care after being resuscitated on Monday, his wife, Umm Abdul Rahman told Al Rai newspaper.
“The problem started on April 4, when the lift of a Salmiya building failed. The residents have been suffering for almost two months and their complaints to the landlord have fallen on deaf ears amid the fasting month of Ramadan and the coronavirus pandemic,” Umm Abdul Rahman said.
“My husband, in his late 50s, was unable to climb the stairs. He suffered a lot from climbing the stairs to our fifth floor apartment before he had a heart attack the day before yesterday. He was admitted to Mubarak Al Kabeer Hospital and is now lying in the intensive care unit,” the wife said.
Umm Abdul Rahman added the incident was the result of worsening relations between some tenants and landlords under these difficult times.
“My husband and I are committed to pay the rent despite the circumstances the country is going through due to the coronavirus pandemic, but the owner abused us because of other tenants who were unable to pay the rent,” she said.
She added when the owner failed to repair the elevator, they too decided not to pay the rent. “Moreover, because my husband has a heart condition, I called the landlord and told him that my husband is terribly sick, and climbing up the stairs worsens his condition.
“But he turned a deaf ear to my complaints, until my husband suffered a heart attack. When I called him again to inform him about what happened, he replied: “I am not an ambulance, why do you call me?”.
“The building we live in does not have a watchman, so we suffered greatly during the month of Ramadan from mistreatment. When my husband had a heart attack on the second day of Eid, we called the ambulance, which came within 5 minutes and took him to Mubarak Hospital. There they conducted a cardiac resuscitation and he had a new lease on life,” Umm Abdul Rahman said.
She appealed to officials to intervene and put an end to their suffering.
Umm Abdul Rahman said she went to the Salmiya police station along with a number of the tenants to file a complaint and a policeman was sent to inspect the building. A report was filed with the station.
