Fifty disabled and elderly people have turned to the SA Human Rights Commission to stop the Department of Social Development from evicting them from an abandoned clinic in Benoni.Zelda Maseko, founder of the Lingelethu Home-Based Care Centre for the Elderly and Disabled, said they approached the commission last month.Maseko, a nurse, started the non-profit organisation to provide home-based care. She launched it after numerous encounters with homeless elderly and frail people.She initially had five people living in a small dilapidated house on a plot in Petit but was forced to find a bigger place as the numbers grew.Maseko said she found the perfect place, an abandoned high-care clinic in Benoni. She had it cleaned up and painted and pays R1500 rent a month.As word of the new facility spread, more people were referred to the centre by social workers.But in September,health department officials conducted an inspection and compiled a report in which she said they misrepresented the information they had gathered.The report accused Maseko of violating the residents' human rights by "running a dirty, fly- ridden and smelly home with no running water".The officials reported that the home was not registered and had no food-handling and environmental-health certificates.But Maseko is in possession of the documents the department claims she did not have. She accused the officials of lying to justify their plan to close the centre."The [Department of Social Development] officials say they are acting on the recommendations from the health department but none of the so-called facts is true. I still invite them to come to the centre and see for themselves that the home is suitable for housing these helpless people," she said.Isaac Mangena, spokesman for the SA Human Rights Commission, confirmed that it was investigating the matter, saying it was concerned about the abuse of elderly people."The commission recognises that older people constitute a vulnerable group with unique and differing needs compared with those of other vulnerable groups, such as women, children or people with disabilities, and that they therefore deserve focused attention to address and resolve the rights violations currently being experienced by older people," he said.Attempts to reach the Department of Social Development spokesman Lumka Oliphant were unsuccessful...