Many domestic workers in Hong Kong have been “abandoned” by their employers, with some forced to sleep rough or are denied access to medical care after having contracted Covid-19, charities denounced on Friday.
Some 370,000 foreign domestic employeesmostly Filipino and Indonesian women, work in Hong Kong, where they cook, clean and care for the children of well-to-do families.
According to the law, these workers must be housed with their employer, cannot change jobs and are only entitled to one day of rest per week.
A group of associations representing them denounced on Friday a serious deterioration in their living conditions, at a time when Hong Kong – largely immune to the pandemic for two years thanks to draconian isolation – is overwhelmed by Covid cases. -19 since the highly contagious Omicron variant appeared in the city.
According to this group, the workers have been brutally fired by their employers after contracting the virus and must sleep on the streets.
Having lost their jobs, some are denied access to hospitals.