THROWN OUT IN A HONG KONG RAIN STORM
'Rosa' is still nervous about us using her real name but Gretha feels that she has nothing more to lose because she has lost everything already.
Gretha Rebollido borrowed about HK$ 10,000 for agents fees and travel costs to get herself a job in Hong Kong.
During her short stay with a family in Tuen Mun - not the original family she'd signed a contract with but one which chooses to live in two separate flats in different blocks of the same estate.
It is interesting that these two addresses were allowed to be specified on the contract (compare this to the food allowance directive in "Rosa's" case) so the Labour Department clearly condones the employment of one person working in two places.
Gretha was given very little to eat mostly leftovers from the family's plates not from the serving dishes!
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Ralph Pixton on RTHK's Open Line (Saturday October 20th, 1990) described this as being "straight out of Dickens." He summed up: "The Filipina helper - eating scraps from the children's plates, its just appalling treatment.
The reasons for, and the timing of, her dismissal were equally reprehensible. Even the employer's children were upset by it and tried to intervene on Gretha's behalf but to no avail.
The story she tells is: "I was given some bad bread to eat and I hid it. When the Mom got angry I said I was sorry and later my Agent told me to write an apology. I did this because I did not want to lose my job after only 10 days but she still made me leave in the rain at 10.30pm.
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Her employer insists that she resigned and will give her no money or airline ticket. Gretha has no alternative but to enter into a dispute for her rights and she later prepared a four page statement on the situation leading up to her dismissal.
But this is how her story was interpreted on the Labour Department's form for presentation to the tribunal:
"(a)
Defendant was angry with her about wasting food in Sept. 10 morning, and asked her to pack her things and leave."
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Appendix B
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