KUALA LUMPUR: A Malaysian couple was sentenced to hang for starving their Indonesian maid to death, a defence lawyer said yesterday, in the latest shocking case to spotlight abuse of domestic helpers in the region.
Isti Komariyah weighed just 26 kilogrammes on her death in Kuala Lumpur in June 2011 from what a court ruled was deliberate starvation, according to Malaysian media reports on the ruling issued Thursday.
“She was 26 and weighed barely 26kg when she was taken to the University Malaya Medical Centre with bruises and scratch marks on her back, arms and forehead,” The Star newspaper reported.
Fong Kong Meng, 58, and his wife Teoh Ching Yen, 56, consistently withheld food from Isti during the three years she worked for them, the court found. Isti had weighed 46 kilogrammes when she first started working for the couple.
Pilot injured in plane crash
DAVAO CITY: The pilot was hurt when his light plane used for spraying pesticides crashed in the southern Philippines yesterday morning, police said.
Helson Rivera, 47, suffered minor injuries to his left elbow after the single-engine aircraft went down near houses at Visayan Village, Tagum City in Davao del Norte province around 6am, provincial police chief Samuel Gadingan said.
The yellow and white plane of Mactan Aviation with tail number RP-3024 hired by banana giant Lapanday Corporation was on its way to conduct spraying runs when its engine apparently malfunctioned, causing it to crash at Macopa community, Gadingan said.
Local resident Noemi Diaz said he saw the aircraft zoomed overhead and then heard a loud sound outside her father’s house.
“We rushed out and ran away, fearing the plane might burst into flames,” Diaz told Xinhua. Aside from the pilot, no other person was hurt, although another resident was allegedly sprayed with a liquid substance from the plane as he was just meters from where the plane went down, police said.
Plane crashes and other accidents are common in southern Philippines where vast banana plantations use aging light aircrafts to apply pesticides over the crops.
Agencies
