"Boom......" The hum of the machine's rotation aroused Xương's lingering nightmare. He could never forget the pain and horror of being squeezed into the electroplating dehydrator with his left hand.
Xương is an introverted boy from Vietnam with eyes hiding deep thoughts under the delicate single eyelid. He looked at the large brown scar on his left hand and told us calmly, this is the sixth operation, it will be fate if he still can't recover.
Xương will never forget that day. On June 21, 2021, he was operating the electroplating dehydrator in the factory as usual. The end of his left glove thread was suddenly dragged into the high-speed rotating machine table, and his whole left hand was stirred in by centrifugal force, making his skin and flesh instantly torn. The bone of his arm split in two on the spot. At that time, he looked at his crushed hand, felt that his heart had been frozen by desperation. "I found that my left hand was going to be useless for the rest of my life."
Enduring anxiety and severe pain, he sought emergency treatment for his bloody hand. During the operation, it was discovered that not only the bones of Xương's left arm were broken, but also its tendons were crushed. This serious work injury caused Xương to be hospitalized for three months. Although he can move his fingers slowly after rehabilitation, the recovery situation is not optimistic. Ordinary people would be scared and change jobs if they encountered such a serious accident. However, Xương has to pay his agency fees more than NT$150,000 for coming to Taiwan, so now the pressure of repayment forced him to return to his original factory to work.
Returning to the factory, Xương faced great psychological trauma. Whenever he saw the high-speed operation of the machine and heard the sound of the machine running, his heart would tense and his head would go blank. Daily work has become a nightmare-like torment. He kept asking himself, what link went wrong that caused all these? He clearly remembers the first day when he came to join the factory. No one appeared to teach him any safety precautions. All he knew was that the factory was very hot and dangerous, and almost every migrant worker here had been scalded by chemical agents. Dealing with such a dangerous job, he was only given a pair of robert rain boots and a scarf, as well as construction site gloves and an antibacterial mask.
The high-risk working environment and the education and training with language gap put migrant workers in dire danger. These young people who came from foreign lands could have lost a hand or even lost their life. The setbacks at work and the endless rehabilitation treatment made Xương lose his smile. At the end of last year, Xương's father passed away unexpectedly in Vietnam, which made him, who was originally introverted, even more silent.
Because he often went back to the hospital to recover, Xương's employer dismissed him on the grounds that he took too much time off. How can Xương, who has only one hand that can be used normally, find his next job? With the intervention and assistance of the masses, we successfully obtained compensation for Xương, and arranged for him to live in our Vietnamese shelter to recover from his injuries.
During this time, we silently accompanied Xương through his emotional trough, and the migrant workers in the shelter were also willing to take care of him, accompany him often, and give him psychological support. With our assistance, Xương has completed the sixth operation, taking a part of the hip bone to fill the bone in his left hand, hoping to make the healing smoother. Now Xương can slowly lift five kilograms of objects. We are all very happy for him. With everyone's encouragement, he has decided to return to the workplace.