Maid stuck on ledge in runaway attempt
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.
