KUALA LUMPUR: Vivi's family members thought that their daughter had died when they didn't receive news about her for nine years after being employed as a maid in Malaysia at 17.
Vivi had not received any salary for nine years and also worked as a mechanic at her employer's workshop every day.
Now 29, Vivi is pursuing two court cases against her employers to get about RM211,000 in unpaid wages.
The case, after three years, is being brought up to the Court of Appeal after the High Court had ruled in Vivi's favour recently.
The employers are appealing to pay about RM150,000.
Vivi said she would start her day at 5am, cleaning the house and preparing for her employers' children to go to school in Kelantan. Then she had to work as a mechanic from 9am to late.
"Depending on the number of customers, I sometimes got back only around 1am.
"I would then clean the house, and I'd repeat this routine the next day."
She said there were three families living with her employers, who also hired another domestic worker and shared the same fate as her.
She said she had tried to run away a few times when she was at the workshop, but she was often monitored by other employees.
"I finally managed to run away when my employers forgot to lock the gate.
"I ran for four hours to my agents' house as I had their business card with me.
"I was scared that my employers would look for me. I told the agents what had happened to me, and we lodged a police report.
"I phoned my parents for the first time in six years. They cried as they thought I had died."
Meanwhile, Yati, who left Indonesia when she was 25, was not paid a salary for 19 years.
Yati had to work as a maid and shopkeeper for her employers in Puchong, Selangor.
She received only RM350 a year before she escaped and sought protection at the Indonesian embassy.
She had gone home only once 17 years ago for two months. She returned to Malaysia after her employers promised to give her the rest of her salary.
Now, at 45, a year after she fled to the embassy, Yati is negotiating to get about RM150,000 in unpaid wages from her employers through the Labour Department.
"I had to wake up at 4.30am every day to do housework and prepare my employers' four children to go to school.
"We would then go to the shop from 9am to 10pm.
"I would sleep at midnight or around 1am after cleaning the house, making dinner, and washing and ironing clothes.
"That was my routine every day," she said, adding that her passport had also been withheld by her employers.
When she asked her employers for her pay, they said: "We don't have any money."
The employers, she said, would even confiscate money packets she had received from other family members.
She said she had asked her employers many times to send her back to Indonesia, but her employers' daughter was so attached to Yati that they would reject her request.
When asked why she hadn't tried to flee earlier, she said that she was afraid of being taken advantage of by other people as she neither had money nor her passport.
"I was taken to the Indonesian embassy a few times by my employers to renew my passport. The embassy was quite far.
"The embassy officials did ask me if I was being treated well and if my wages had been paid.
"But my employers were always next to me.
"How was I supposed to ask for help?"
She said she found the courage to run away after Deepavali last year when her sister, who was working in Singapore, told her that she needed to run away as she had been duped.
After receiving money packets with RM100, Yati took a taxi to the embassy.
"I can't wait to go home and meet my child, who is now a grown-up. My father is also very ill."
This package of stories by NST Focus is part of the Tip The Narrative: Beyond The Headlines Fellowship Programme by Project Liber8