Living on the breadline

Aggravated burden

Jota said her son was hit by a motorcycle in April 2018 — his left leg was broken and his brain severely damaged — aggravating her family's nightmare. "He was catapulted into a hole and the sheer impact on his brain impaired his nervous system, affecting his mobility."

Weekly medical consultations and therapies have become part of her son's life since the accident, taking up a huge chunk of the family's income. Her son's medical bill comes to about HK$2,400 (US$308) monthly, while Jota earns just HK$4,630 a month in Hong Kong.

Fate has been cruel to Jota. As she was barely scraping through to cover her son's medical expenses, her husband fell from a tree, fracturing his back. "I didn't have even a penny to spare for my husband's hospitalization."

Runaway inflation with skyrocketing commodity prices amid lengthy lockdowns in the Philippines has piled financial pressure on Jota. Besides the medical spending on her son and husband, she takes care of her three other sons' cellphone bills of about HK$600 each month. The pandemic has made her bankrupt. Fortunately, her in-laws offered to help out using government subsidies.

Jota said she is "very stressful and desperate". Since joining Gabriela Hong Kong — a non-governmental organization committed to promoting the rights and welfare of Filipino women — Jota has been relying on it to seek calmness and a sense of belonging, and to alleviate her "pain, sorrow, loneliness, homesickness and anxiety". It has helped her to cope with the situation, she said.

The hard times have also forced many expatriate employers to quit Hong Kong, leaving their domestic workers in the lurch. Some local employers are in the same boat, unable to keep their domestic workers, rendering them jobless overnight.

"We have seen even sound employer-employee relationships on the rocks. The domestic workers come to us for help or mediation in thrashing out the settlement terms with their employers, especially when their contracts were abruptly terminated because of the financial hardships of either their bosses or themselves," said Manisha Wijesinghe, executive director of HELP for Domestic Workers — an outreach program at St John's Cathedral (Hong Kong) that provides advice and help concerning employment and other issues to migrant domestic workers in the city.