A domestic caregiver from Indonesia was jailed for six months on Wednesday by a court in Taipei for abandoning her bedridden elderly employer last October.
The 44-year-old maid claimed she ran away after the employment agency that hired her slashed her pay.
The maid, Agustin Inbaryati, was hired in September 2017 by a Taiwanese woman surnamed Yu to look after her elderly parents, especially her father who became confined to bed and was unable to do anything for himself after suffering a stroke, the United Daily News reported.
Shihlin District Court learned that the maid ran away on October 14, 2017, two days after the elderly woman went to a hospital for a week of treatment.
The woman returned home on October 17 and was shocked to find her husband lying naked in the bed full of excrement, while the carer was nowhere seen.
The elderly man was sent to a hospital and found to be mildly dehydrated, which was a result of being left unattended for about three days.
Inbaryati pleaded guilty to breaching her contract, then explained that she ran away because the employment agency was not paying her the wage that they promised her.
The maid was, nevertheless, jailed for six months for putting the vulnerable man’s life in danger, after consideration that she had pleaded guilty and made an apology to the victim’s family.