A photo of a domestic worker standing on an outside ledge and cleaning a window of a 14th floor apartment in South Horizons on Hong Kong Island on Monday during the typhoon has gone viral on social media.
According to the domestic worker who shared the photo on Facebook at about noon on Monday, a maid was standing on a ledge and appeared to be cleaning a window and the ledge on the 14th floor of the building, hongknongnew.com reported.
The Hong Kong Observatory had lowered the typhoon signal from No. 8 to No. 3 at 5:20am and that remained in place until 2:40pm. That meant the domestic worker cleaned the window and trough while the No. 3 signal was hoisted.
The Filipina who posted the photo online said her employer had reported the incident to police. In July, an Indonesian domestic worker fell to her death while cleaning the window of her employer’s high-rise apartment in Tseung Kwan O.
In 2017, the Labor Department introduced rules aimed at protecting domestic helpers from requests to clean the exterior of windows in high-rise buildings.
Two new clauses were added to employment contracts. One clause states that only windows with locked grilles can be cleaned by maids. The other stated that no part of the helper’s body should be outside the window except the arms.
Read: Maid killed after falling while window-cleaning in Hong Kong