An overseas Filipino worker in Saudi Arabia was in tears as she recounted how for three hours she suffered in excruciating pain after her employer scalded her with boiling water.
Pahima “Candies” Alagasi Palacasi in a radio interview said she was even more bothered that her mother’s blood pressure might shoot up hearing the news about her in the oil-rich Islamic kingdom.
“I’m worried about my mother who has high-blood pressure,” a crying Palacasi said in a phone interview.”
She first received attention when her cousin posted photos of her burnt skin on Facebook, causing an uproar among netizens.
The migrant worker, who was working as a domestic helper in Riyadh, said she dropped the cap of the water heater when she was making coffee for her employer.
That was when her irritated female employer doused her with boiling water, Palacasi said.
“I didn’t see her from behind. She threw the boiling water on me,” Palacasi said.
After scalding her, the employer just went to her room leaving Palacasi in pain, the domestic helper from North Cotabato said.
“She went outside the kitchen then went to her room, leaving me,” she said.
Her cries for help went unnoticed, Palacasi said.
“I fell down when I could no longer bear the pain in my body. I asked help from her but she did not offer any help,” she said.
Palacasi said she had to wait for three hours in her room crying before she was taken to a small clinic by her employers.
“I went to my room and cried because nobody would help me. I was brought to the clinic after three hours,” she said.
Even Palacasi could not fathom how she endured the pain that long. “I also don’t know how I endured that pain for three hours before being brought to the clinic,” Palacasi said. It was a Filipina nurse at the clinic who contacted Palacasi’s sister.
This was not the first time Palacasi was maltreated by her employers. She said she was constantly being beaten up by her employer, supposedly because she could not focus on her work for being homesick.
“I feel homesick and when I want to call my family they wouldn’t allow me to,” she said.
Palacasi now fears never being able to go back home to the Philippines. I really want to go home. I’m afraid that I might not be able to do that anymore,” she said.
The Philippine Overseas Labor Office has suspended the agency that recruited Palacasi. — (By Marc Jayson Cayabyab, INQUIRER.net)