A young domestic helper stood stranded on a window ledge in
Bedok South on Friday after entertaining second thoughts about
trying to run away from her employer via a rope of bedsheets.
Early that morning, the 23-year-old Indonesian maid tied several
pieces of blankets, bedsheets and clothes together with a piece of
black luggage at the end, and dangled the long line out of a window
of her employer’s eighth-storey flat at Block 163, Bedok South
Road.
She had only climbed down one floor when she decided not to
proceed any further, and stood on the ledge at the seventh floor
before she was found by a passing cleaner, reported Shin Min
Daily News.
“I was working, looked up and saw her,” said the cleaner, who
gestured for the maid to stay where she was, adding that she seemed
to understand him.
It is not known how long the maid had been standing on the ledge
before she was found.
Police told Yahoo! Singapore that they received a call for
assistance at 7:30am. It is believed that officers who arrived then
walked through the seventh-storey apartment, addressing the maid in
Malay and helping her to climb through the window and into the
house.
65-year-old Madam Su, who lived in the seventh-storey flat, told
reporters she was shocked when the police knocked on her door that
morning, and was quoted as saying that she was afraid that the maid
would lose her balance on her ledge as her windows opened
outwards.
The housewife later added that the maid started to cry after she
had climbed into the seventh-floor flat.
Shin Min also reported that the maid said that her boss,
for whom she had worked for about three to four months, had slapped
her, and she had been afraid and upset.
Yahoo! Singapore understands that officers who spoke to
her at the scene brought her to a police station for more
questioning, and then sent her back to her agency. No injuries were
found on her, however.
It is also believed that police had questioned the maid’s employer,
who denied abusing the maid. The employer is also understood to
have said that the maid had run away on previous occasions.
-- Yahoo!