A suspect was arrested in relation to the abandonment of a baby girl in the Flower City Building in Taipa earlier this week, said a Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman at a media briefing last night.
The suspect, who is believed to be the mother of the abandoned child, is a 23-year-old Filipino domestic worker who arrived in Macau on February 4 traveling via the Macau International Airport.
On February 16 the suspect went to the bathroom in the Flower City Building in the early hours of the morning and gave birth unassisted. She told police that she thought the baby had died, as it was not crying. Subsequently, the suspect covered the baby in a blanket and threw it into the garbage bin.
According to the PJ, the woman traveled to Macau on a tourism visa, accompanied by her employer, who is also from the Philippines.
The PJ told reporters that the suspect has another child – a five-year-old son – but that they are not certain of where he resides. They added that her employer also has children – a five-year-old boy and a baby girl whose age could not be confirmed.
The abandoned baby girl was discovered on Tuesday morning after residents of the 17th floor of the Flower City Building alerted a cleaner to the presence of blood in the garbage room. The baby was immediately sent to the hospital where it has since made a recovery.
Later on the same day and in the same residential complex, the investigating police unit stopped another Filipino domestic worker and her boyfriend as they were behaving suspiciously. The PJ said that the woman told police that she was feeling unwell but after searching her bag they found a glass jar containing the dead fetus of a baby boy.
The second domestic worker had also given birth in the building, in the bathroom of her employer’s home. She said that the baby had died during the premature birth.
The Social Welfare Bureau says that there are few cases of mothers abandoning babies in the MSAR and that they mainly involve non-residents. A total of six incidents were registered by the bureau between 2011 and 2015, usually caused by parents’ incapacity to look after their children.
If there really are few cases of such abandonment in Macau, then the dual incidents that occurred on Tuesday could be a disconcerting coincidence. Alternatively it could point to a larger, lesser-reported social problem in the territory. Staff reporter
maid siphons mop850,000
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