Severe repair delays for Windsor mom's government wheelchair

A Windsor mother with cerebral palsy says she has to wait far too long to have her government-funded wheelchair repaired.

Maria Wiebe spent hours in bed Sunday morning before crawling to her computer in order to find a phone number to report her wheelchair problems.

Getting her chair repaired regularly takes hours, sometimes weeks, Wiebe explained. That kind of wait is dreadful for the mother who cares for a four-year-old daughter.

"If I didn't have a computer, I wouldn't have been able to get the [number] to call someone," she said.

Wiebe then waited at home for several hours before someone took a look at the chair and determined it had an electrical problem.

It could be days, if not weeks, before she has access to her chair. In the meantime, she has been issued a manual chair as a replacement, but that is almost impossible to use because of her cerebral palsy.

Wiebe can only grip the wheels with one hand. With a manual chair, she is limited to just her living room because she can't manoeuvre even the smallest lip in the floor.

"Unless I can call someone to help me get over that, I'm not getting anywhere," she said.

Wiebe expects to get another power chair until hers is repaired, but getting that approved has been a challenge.

She has had similar problems in the past, leaving her in her apartment in a manual chair for two weeks.

A spokesperson from the Ministry of Health said in an email to CBC the ministry expects the vendors of chairs to work with the customers within 72 hours of a reported breakdown. It says that requirement is met 95 per cent of the time across the province.

Motion Specialities, the company that provides Wiebe's chair, did not respond to CBC's request for comment by Tuesday afternoon.