For breaking the conditions of her employment in Hong Kong, a Filipino domestic helper who has been working in Hong Kong for the past 24 years was sentenced to three months in jail after a labor inspector caught her selling vegetables in a public market.
According to Hong Kong News, Sha Tin Magistrate Ivy Chiu on March 16 convicted Trinidad S. Caritativo, 46, of breach of condition of stay after the prosecution proved beyond reasonable doubt that she sold vegetables to an undercover labor inspector last year.
Despite Caritativo’s claims it was a case of a mistaken identity, Judge Chiu accepted the argument of the prosecution.
“After having carefully considered the evidence, I accept the prosecution case in its entirety. The (labor inspector) was reliable and truthful in describing what happened.
“There s no such possibility of mistaken identity,” she added.
On October 19, a labor officer surnamed Lau said they received information that a foreigner was working in a vegetable stall inside the Java Road Municipal Services Building in North Point.
When Lau arrived at the store, a Chinese man and a foreign woman were in the shop tending to the goods.
“After approaching the store, I asked what the price of the snow peas was. The foreign female replied to me in Cantonese, ‘$24,'” Lau said.
The inspector then bought a few vegetables from Caritativo who allegedly gave her coins as change, implying that the Filipina was indeed working at the shop. Lau then called her colleagues from the Immigration Department and the police arrived at the scene and arrested Caritativo.
In her defense, Caritativo went to the market to buy vegetables because she was meeting friends that day and one of them will cook the vegetables.
But the judge saw inconsistencies in the sequence of events. The magistrate noted that Caritativo said she was planning to buy an eggplant and okra and arrived at the market around 10:45 a.m. She was going to meet her friends at 11:15 a.m. but up to the time when the police arrived, she was still at the market.
“Why spend 90 minutes there without making up her mind where and what to buy? She also claimed that she was meeting her friends at 11:15 a.m. but then she stayed for 90 minutes without buying anything,” Judge Chiu said.
The judge added that there was also no possibility of Lau mistaking Caritativo as someone else because the inspector had observed the Filipino woman at the shop for a long time.