PH consulate reascues Pinoys sleeping outdoors, vows justice for them
Some Filipino workers who tested positive for COVID-19 in Hong Kong were either fired or driven away by their employers, the Philippine consul general said Sunday.
In an interview with ABS-CBN’s TeleRadyo, Consul General Raly Tejada said the Philippines will go after “heartless” employers who terminate the contracts of sick Filipinos, saying this was against the laws of Hong Kong.
He said the Philippines will blacklist and file cases against these employers who neglected OFWs testing positive for COVID-19.
Tejada said some 30 OFWs in Hong Kong have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past few days.
While the OFWs were classified as either mild or asymptomatic cases, some of them are not being admitted to hospitals as the facilities were already full.
Tejeda said the consulate has rescued up to 10 Filipino workers who were forced to sleep outdoors after being sacked by employers for testing positive for COVID-19.
“We have rescued all of them and put them in isolation and medical facilities,” he said.
Tejada said employers are responsible for the treatment of their COVID-positive employees.
Those found guilty of firing sick workers will face fines, among other sanctions, said Tejada, adding that he has been in contact with Hong Kong’s labor office.
Charities on Friday said Hong Kong’s foreign domestic workers were being “abandoned” in the current COVID-19 wave sweeping the city, with some forced to sleep rough or being denied treatment after testing positive.
Hong Kong residents live in one of the world’s most densely packed cities and rely on some 370,000 foreign domestic workers, the vast majority of whom are women from the Philippines and Indonesia who cook, clean, and care for their families.
The Chinese financial hub is currently in the throes of its worst-ever coronavirus outbreak, registering thousands of confirmed cases a day as hospitals reach breaking point.
Foreign domestic workers must live with their employers, cannot swap jobs easily, and are only entitled to one day off a week.
On Friday a coalition of groups representing migrant workers said the already grim pandemic conditions have plunged further in the current outbreak.
Some workers had been sacked by employers after testing positive, forcing them to sleep outdoors. Others found themselves denied treatment at hospitals because they had lost their jobs.
Activists said many Hong Kong employers were refusing to let their domestic workers leave often cramped apartments even on their day off, while some had been fired for taking their rest day.
“For us staying home means we have to work,” said Dolores Balladares Pallaez from the Asian Migrants Coordinating Body, adding workers needed “compassion and help” from both the government and wider society.
Construction crews from China were helping Hong Kong build two temporary isolation facilities to house thousands of coronavirus patients on Sunday as a senior official declared the city “in full combat mode.”
A strict zero-COVID policy like what China uses kept infections at bay for two years but left the city cut off internationally.
And when the highly transmissible Omicron variant broke through, authorities were caught flat-footed with a dangerously under-vaccinated elderly population and few plans in place to deal with a mass outbreak.
Late Saturday city leader Carrie Lam announced that China State Construction International Holdings, the largest state-owned constructor in Hong Kong, would start work on two temporary isolation facilities to provide 9,500 extra beds.
The units will be located at Penny’s Bay, which already hosts a quarantine camp, and in Kai Tak where the city’s old airport once stood.
Lam also announced that three hotels would be used to create an additional 20,000 beds.
Chief Secretary John Lee, Hong Kong’s number two official, wrote on his official blog on Sunday that the city’s government was in “full combat mode.”
“With our motherland’s strong support, we will definitely win the battle,” Lee wrote.
The sudden flurry of activity came after Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered Hong Kong to make tackling the outbreak its “overriding mission” in comments that were seen as something of a rebuke to the city’s leadership.
It is not yet clear when the new facilities will be ready and whether they will be enough given Hong Kong’s spiraling caseload.
Under China’s direction, Hong Kong is sticking to a policy of trying to isolate everyone who tests positive for the coronavirus and has rejected calls to shift to a strategy of living with COVID.
Over the last few days officials have announced around 6,000 confirmed cases daily with a similar number of “preliminary positives” that still need to be certified.
About 22,000 cases have been recorded since the current outbreak hit last month compared to just 12,000 in the two years before that.
Some hospitals have had to house patients on gurneys outdoors in grim winter conditions while thousands are still waiting at home in the city’s notoriously small apartments with positive test results.
Ben Cowling, a coronavirus expert at the University of Hong Kong, said isolation facilities would be useful but increasing hospital beds must be a priority.
“New cases needing admission will continue to accumulate faster than beds are freed up, and delays to admission will get longer and longer,” Cowling wrote on Twitter.
“Construction of isolation facilities for mild/asymptomatic cases will be useful for people that can’t isolate at home… but increasing hospital beds and ICU beds must be a priority.”
Lam announced plans on Friday to test Hong Kong’s entire 7.5 million population by some point in March when modelers predict the daily
caseload could reach 28,000.
She has ruled out the kind of hard lockdown that China has used to stamp out smaller outbreaks.