Live-in domestic workers in Hong Kong have been left homeless after they were diagnosed with Covid-19 and their employers fired them or refused their return to the residence, support groups have said.
There are an estimated 390,000 domestic workers in Hong Kong, working six days a week, for a minimum HK$4630 a month plus food and board. They are legally required to live with their employers and isolating anywhere else, other than government facilities or hospital, is illegal. Stranded at midnight, Maria’s friends reached out to an NGO, HELP For Domestic Workers, who found her a place in a shelter. Other workers have been forced to sleep in parks, at overpasses, or outside hospitals.HELP said they were assisting more than 100 workers left homeless, including at least a dozen who were fired or ordered not to return to the home.
“We are proactively engaging also the employers to explain to them that terminating their employees in these difficult times especially when they are positive is not only illegal. It is immoral.” But leaving the women homeless, some for up to three or four nights in Hong Kong’s winter, was “untenable”.“We understand that it is a scary time and everyone is worried for their own safety, for their children and family’s safety, but the thing is the domestic worker is also part of the family. They are the ones that take care of you on a day to day basis,” she said.
“They gave me a tent and a thick blanket so I wouldn’t feel cold. I slept the whole night outside the boarding house,” she said. Mai has since moved to a shelter, but the NGOs say the facilities, which usually house people in between jobs or waiting for flights home, are ill equipped to also isolate Covid patients.
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