Philippine maids flee Gaddafi family
2011-09-25 17:11
Manila - Two Filipina maids who were trapped working for a nephew of deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi plotted their escape in whispers from a toilet and eventually fled barefoot, one of them said on Sunday.
The two maids, Diana Jill Rivera and Mary Ann Ducos have returned to the Philippines after an ordeal in which they said they had been underpaid by their employer and their repeated appeals to quit were denied.
Ducos, 29, said: "We really wanted to leave but he did not want to let us go. He wanted us to finish our two-year contract."
The two had been working in a house in the Libyan capital of Tripoli owned by a Gaddafi nephew they identified as Sharif Tahal for a year but had asked to leave as the insurgency against the strongman and his family spread.
"He was OK...he did not physically mistreat us," Ducos said of their employer.
She said, however, that when the two asked to go home, he refused to let them out of the house.
Ducos said they felt too scared to go against his wishes and were intimidated by heading out alone on to the chaotic streets of Tripoli.
Even before the unrest broke out, their employer had paid them only $200 a month, half the $400 they had been promised in their contracts.
Meanwhile, Ducos and Rivera have been promised new jobs in a hotel in the central Philippine city of Cebu, another report said.