26-year-old May Thu, a maid from Myanmar, jumped from the fourth floor of a HDB block at Lorong 1 Toa Payoh on August 16, and she survived.
However, her employer is now burdened with a medical bill of S$72,000.
Witnesses who lived in the same unit as the helper claimed that the maid was acting strangely before the sad incident.
According to reports from Shin Min Daily News, May Thu renewed her contract in December of last year but she grew depressed because she couldn’t go back to Myanmar in April this year as planned due to the Covid-19 pandemic, her flight home was cancelled.
Trying to give their maid a change of environment, the employer forked out $140 for her to spend a week resting at the dormitory of her agency, where several others tried to socialize with her but she remained depressed and kept to herself.
Before jumping down from the block, May Thu tried to stab her housemate with a pair of scissors but failed.
She was then restrained by the others in the house but she broke free and ran up and down the corridor, even hitting her head against a wall despite their efforts to control her.
That was when she suddenly ran and jumped off the fourth floor of the block.
A neighbour who saw the aftermath of the incident said: “When I came out and saw what happened, the helper had jumped. Blood was splattered around her and her body was twitching. It was horrifying.”
The maid was lying motionless at the bottom of the block and was they conveyed to Tan Tock Seng Hospital, where she was conveyed conscious.
She has since went through three rounds of surgery and has been in the ICU for more than a week, with her medical bills coming up to over a thousand dollars per day (which includes her operation fee).
The bills have come up to S$72,000 presently, and it is still growing.
The employer is a hawker and she is struggling to pay the bills, along with the $500 she has to fork out from her earnings to pay for her own mother’s accommodation in an old folks’ home.
May Thu’s insurance only partially covered the bills with a payout of S$15,000.
The maid’s family has been informed of the situation.
Police investigations are ongoing at the moment.
The Centre for Domestic Employees (CDE) are also doing their own investigations into the matter, urging domestic helpers not to put themselves in harmful situations.