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Grieving relatives of domestic helpers killed in the Tai Po fire have struggled to break the news to victims’ children while fending off scammers targeting their compensation from Hong Kong authorities, according to a workers’ rights advocate after a trip to Indonesia.
Esther Tse Yan-yin, an organiser from the Association for the Rights of Industrial Accident Victims, travelled to Indonesia in January to visit the immediate relatives of eight helpers who died in the inferno at Wang Fuk Court last November.
Ten foreign domestic helpers, aged between 32 and 48, perished in the fire at the housing estate. Nine were Indonesian and one was Filipino.
She recounted the story of Siti Khotimah, 40, who was looking forward to reuniting with her 11-year-old daughter after six years. A few months earlier, Khotimah had shown her daughter a bracelet during a video call. The child’s name was engraved on the bracelet, and it was meant to be her birthday present this year.
“I cannot possibly imagine the feeling of the little girl, who had been waiting for six years for her mother to come home, yet that day will never happen,” Tse said.
Among the eight Indonesian helpers, six had children who had been awaiting their mothers’ homecoming.
Tse said some carers did not even know how to break the news of the deaths to the children, although some of them had a feeling that something was not right. “One of the children asked her grandparents why mummy had not called them for so long,” she said.
For those who were left with young children, Tse said some of the families were expected to turn to Hong Kong’s legal system to handle the inheritance, preferring to hold the money for their children until they turned 18 under a court order.
Desy Widyana, 40, was unmarried and had no children, but was survived by a younger brother, who kept her picture in his mobile phone case.
Widyana had been away from home for nearly 10 years and planned to retire after finishing her contract this year.
Tse said she could sense the families processing their grief in different ways.
“I would say some are experiencing delayed grief,” she said.
Signing off,
Fiona Chow
Reporter, Hong Kong
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