Pricey dental care, lack of options on Sundays leave Hong Kong helpers desperate
NGOs and unions say arrest of six women over illegal dental clinic for foreign domestic workers highlights lack of accessible options
A lawmaker also said on Wednesday that one solution was for the city to adopt a similar policy to Singapore, where employers are required to buy comprehensive medical insurance, including dental care, for their helpers.
Earlier this week, Hong Kong immigration authorities arrested six domestic helpers on suspicion of running an unlicensed dental clinic at a tenement flat in Sham Shui Po.
The suspects, aged 34 to 60, were all from the Philippines. Two allegedly worked as unlicensed dentists, while the rest were believed to have acted as assistants and provided services such as scaling, orthodontic treatment and denture production.
The Immigration Department said its investigations suggested that the suspects had learned dentistry from watching online videos, as none of them had any formal training or qualifications.
Adequate medical coverage for the city’s estimated 370,000 foreign domestic helpers has been a long-standing concern among organisations supporting such workers, with groups saying the arrests had shone a spotlight on the lack of accessible dental care options.