Indonesian maid jailed for putting urine in Hong Kong baby's milk

Sep 8, 2010, 5:41 GMT

Hong Kong - An Indonesian maid who mixed her own urine with the formula milk she fed to a Hong Kong infant she was looking after has been jailed, a report said Wednesday.

The maid, 24-year-old Purwanti, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, added her own urine to the formula milk because of a traditional rural Indonesian belief that it makes a baby more obedient and closer to the carer, a court was told.

Purwanti pleaded guilty to a charge of administering a noxious substance with intent to injure and was jailed for a month by Hong Kong's Eastern Court Tuesday, the South China Morning Post reported.

She was arrested in February after her employer noticed a yellow colour and strange odour in the drink. The baby had already drunk 130 millilitres of the formula, the court heard.

Purwanti confessed to adding her urine to the water but her lawyer argued she had not intended to harm the baby and was simply following a rural Indonesian custom. The baby was unharmed, the report said.

More than 130,000 Indonesian women are employed as live-in domestic helpers in Hong Kong, earning a government-set minimum wage equivalent to around 460 US dollars a month.

A support group for Indonesian helpers told the Hong Kong Standard newspaper it was aware of the rural belief concerning urine and would issue a circular telling maids not to do it in Hong Kong.