OFW returns home to Davao in a coffin days after leaving

Apple Gamale

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InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5

MANILA, Philippines - Just days after she left for Singapore to work as a domestic helper, 24-year old Apple Gamale was back home - in a coffin, an alleged suicide.

Gamale's family said they could not believe Apple had killed herself by jumping from the sixth-floor condominium unit of her employer, landing on the fourth floor, on May 10, just a day after she started work.

She died in a hospital two days after her fall.

Copies provided to media by Gamale’s family of their correspondence with Greenworld Placement Services, the agency that recruited Gamae, and its Singapore counterpart, JDM Management Services indicated that Apple arrived in Singapore on May 4 and was fetched by her employer.

The employer, in a text message sent to Gamale's agency, said: "Yes. The first morning she arrived she went missing and (was) later found fallen from height and passed away in hospital… does she have history of depression that we were not told of?"

A certain Lyn from Greenworld said Gamale was “okay before departure.”

Her brother, Ronald, said it was hard to believe that she committed suicide.

"She's not a loner and does not keep problems to herself. The death was far from suicide," he said.

He could not help expressing his disappointment over the "failure" of the Philippine government to help them out, saying they learned about Apple’s death only through messages posted on her Facebook page.

"We were not informed by the (recruitment) agency or the government's concerned agencies," he said.

A representative of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration accompanied the family fetch the body of Gamale from the Davao International Airport Wednesday.

However, he refused to give a statement.

Gamale has been given a wake at the family home in Lupon town, Davao Oriental.

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