A domestic worker in Singapore who missed the funeral of her husband in the Philippines is unable to return home for over a year due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Instead, as the maid, Gelerina Hernandez, 49, watched her husband breathe his last on a video call, her employer Tara Dhar Hasnain sat by her side at her Ulu Pandan condominium in Singapore trying to comfort her.
The fateful incident for the woman occured on Oct 6 last year, but she has not been able to return home since her 53-year-old husband died in San Fernando, Philippines. He was stricken with throat cancer and was unable to speak, but Hernandez could not be at his side due to travel restrictions.
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Hernandez’s husband died a day before his 54th birthday and the Filipina said, “ It was very difficult for me to accept that he was gone.”
The woman last returned home in November 2019 for about four weeks to take care of him.
Though her employer tried to help her out, the requirement of quarantine in Manila for 14 days and that the employer would have to bear the cost of a migrant “worker’s stint serving stay-home notice at a hotel and any treatment, should she be infected when she returned to Singapore” delayed her travel.
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For Hernandez being able to come back to her job was her priority.
The widow from Bacnotan, La Union, in the Philippines, about 280km from Metro Manila, supports a family back home. She has three children, a 27-year-old daughter who is a healthcare worker and two sons, aged 15 and 16, in high school, who live together.
Not having both parents around them has affected the children, said Hernandez.
OFW watches final moments of husband on video call who succumbed to COVID-19
Source: Pinoy News Udpates PH
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