A Hong Kong court has ordered a former employer to pay more than HK$251,000 (US$32,000) in damages to the family of a domestic worker who was dismissed while on medical leave after being diagnosed with advanced cervical cancer and later died, ending a years-long legal battle that drew widespread attention to the vulnerability of the city’s migrant worker community.
The District Court ruled Friday against Jamil Bushra, who fired Filipino helper Baby Jane Allas in February 2019 while she was undergoing treatment for the illness. Bushra, who did not appear at any point during the proceedings, was found to have violated Hong Kong’s Disability Discrimination Ordinance by unlawfully terminating Allas on the grounds of her medical condition.
Deputy District Judge Ebony Ling Yee-nam said in her judgment that the abrupt dismissal had caused Allas “severe emotional distress and financial pressure,” noting evidence that she had cried frequently and been left in a deeply vulnerable state. The judge also observed that Bushra “never apologised to the deceased during her lifetime.”
The Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) filed the case on Allas’s behalf in 2020, by which time she was still in Hong Kong receiving treatment at a private hospital, her medical bills covered through crowdfunding and the generosity of Jessica Cutrera, the employer of Allas’s younger sister.
Allas was a single mother who came to work in Hong Kong in 2017 to support her family in the Philippines. After her termination, she was no longer eligible for free treatment from the Hospital Authority.
Allas subsequently returned to the Philippines, where she died in 2021 at the age of 40. She is survived by five children.
The case has highlighted the precarious legal standing of Hong Kong’s roughly 340,000 foreign domestic workers, who are tied to individual employers under a system that critics say leaves them exposed to abuse and arbitrary dismissal with limited recourse.
The damages will be paid to Allas’s surviving family.
