In the latest case of maid abuse here, a Singaporean husband and wife duo are facing the music in court for the inhumane way they treated their Filipino helper.
Under their employment, 40-year-old Thelma Oyasan Gawidan was deliberately starved and painfully overworked for a 15-month period, before finally making a run for it to seek refuge.
Her former employer, 47-year-old Lim Choon Hong, is facing one charge under the Employment of Foreign Manpower (Work Passes) Regulations 2012, The New Paper reports. His wife, 47-year-old Chong Sui Foon faces a count of abetting Lim in committing the offence.
Thelma herself lost a massive amount of weight while working for the couple — she weighed a mere 29kg when she was admitted in April last year.
She started working for them back in January 2013, and was only given instant noodles (and if she was lucky, some bread) twice a day for meals. As if the mental abuse wasn’t enough, she was only allowed to bathe only once or twice a week, and even so, at a public toilet in her employers’ Orchard Road condo.
It seemed as if the abusers wanted to keep her out of sight at all times — she had to sleep in the storeroom in the day and worked overnight. There was even a time when she was made to work for three days straight without rest.
Thelma finally ran away from the house of horrors on Apr 18 last year and found refuge at a shelter run by the Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics. The Ministry of Manpower was informed of her abuse.
She had to undergo medical check-ups at a general practitioner’s clinic and later on at a hospital. Lim however refused to pay Thelma’s hospital bill as he insists that she was not sick.
The trial continues.
