A Filipina domestic helper and her male employer are set to face off in a trial court in mid-November after failing to settle a salary dispute at the Labour Tribunal on Aug 24.
The two parties are also due to meet in District Court sometime this year in a separate case in which the employer is demanding repayment of a $100,000 loan that he allegedly extended to the helper, Lotis Dayap.
The Filipina did not seem aware of the pending case, until the tribunal’s presiding officer, Daniel Chan asked her if she had received documentary evidence that her employer, Fan Chin-wa, presented to the tribunal and copy furnished to her.
Dayap dug into her file folder and brought out two sets of communications that she reportedly received via registered mail.
“These documents have no relevance to the case,” Chan said after inspecting the documents. It turned out they were notices from the District Court about the upcoming hearing on her alleged $100,000 loan from her former employer.
Dayap told The SUN outside court that she never borrowed that much money from Fan.
In the labour case filed by Dayap, she claimed a total of $9,800, including her unpaid salary for April 25-May 24 and May 25-June 22 from Fan, a farm operator in the New Territories.
Fan filed a counterclaim, accusing Dayap of walking out on her job after receiving her two-month salary for April and May.
To support his claim, Fan presented documents, among them a salary payment grid which allegedly showed Dayap had received her pay for those two months.
However, Fan admitted that he had not paid the maid’s salary for May 24-June 22.
But Dayap insisted that the signature on the payment grid which purported to show her acknowledgment that she had received the contested pay was not hers.
Chan told both parties that if they failed to settle the salary issue in his court, the case would be set down for trial.
“After trial court, you may get the two months’ salary that you’re claiming which your employer claims he had already paid you,” Chan told Dayap. “If the case goes to trial, of course, you will be asked to present more proof that he has to pay you for those two months, as well as your annual leave, air ticket and food allowance.”
Chan said Fan was refusing to pay Dayap anymore because he had a witness, a local male helper, who had allegedly seen her signing the payment grid prepared by the employer.
Of the seven items that Dayap was claiming, the two parties were able to settle only items E and F – the air ticket cost and food allowance totaling $2,330.
Fan claimed that Dayap served a one-month notice to terminate her work contract and left abruptly, but the Filipina flatly denied that.
Chan told the parties to prepare their evidence and book their case for trial on Nov. 15.
Dayap told the SUN that she came to Hong Kong in September last year to serve as Fan’s domestic helper. She said she decided to break her two-year contract on June 22 because she was made to work in Fan’s farm instead.
