A Filipina woman in Perak, Malaysia, who became a widow with two daughters after her husband and 16-year-old son drowned at sea in June, has been awarded a three-year aid package to help her cope financially.
On June 20, 2018, the 49-year-old husband, his 16-year-old son and a 19-year-old man – a friend of the teenage boy – drowned at sea while working on a small fishing boat catching tail sharks, a favorite dish in Taiping, the Sin Chew Daily (Malaysia) reported.
The Sin Chew Daily Foundation contacted the family and gave them a three-year financial aid package of 1,000 ringgit a month. The foundation learned the family depended on the father who was the main breadwinner and the Filipina earned less than 1,000 ringgit a month as a part-time waitress in a restaurant and sold homemade pillow cases.
To help raise her two young daughters, aged 8 and 11, the woman hoped to get an automatic sewing machine to speed up her output of pillow cases.
She was also hoping to get a hawker’s license so she could sell grilled food at night while looking after her daughters during the day.