Domestic helpers give up day off to feed the hungry

Aida Pagaling's alarm clock rings at 5am on Sunday. The domestic helper quickly packs her cooking utensils, puts on her best Sunday dress and leaves her employer's apartment in Happy Valley for a bus to Sham Shui Po.

When she steps into the Cornerstone International Church of God, about 30 other Filipinos are already busy preparing to cook for a crowd, carrying bags of rice and a massive rice cooker onto the balcony.

Together with a dozen Chinese volunteers, they have prepared more than 100 rice boxes by dusk, when a nearby restaurant owner, known as Ming Gor, delivers discounted dishes.

Then Pagaling and her fellow workers carry chairs and plastic tableware to the space under the Tung Chau Street overpass - home to many of Sham Shui Po's hundreds of street sleepers - where dozens of homeless, poor and elderly people wait for a free meal. Some are in wheelchairs or on crutches, some have brought children as young as four.

"I was surprised when I first visited the overpass. I didn't know people lived like that in Hong Kong," said Connie Cruz, a domestic helper who has been in the city for 20 years.

The Street Sleepers Registry kept by the Social Welfare Department reported 595 homeless people in March. However, according to the Society for Community Organisation, there are 1,200 street sleepers citywide, half of whom are in Sham Shui Po.

Cruz and Pagaling joined the free-food programme in April, after a new Cornerstone Church, opened in Sham Shui Po.