A 37-year-old woman, Janice O. Cole, has alleged that the Management of Hotel Buchanan in Grand Bassa County neglected and abandoned her at John F. Kennedy Medical Hospital in Sinkor after she broke her hand, following a fire incident at the hotel on October 2, 2022.
She was illegally dismissed four months later while undergoing treatment in the ‘sick bush’.
Madam Cole, a waitress at the hotel, told journalists that she slipped and broke her left hand while she and others were escaping when a portion of the facility was gutted by fire.
She said that the hotel management initially took her to ArcelorMittal Hospital in Buchanan, where a doctor confirmed that her hand was broken twice and advised that she be referred immediately to JFK Medical Hospital in Monrovia for treatment.
Disappointingly, according to Madam Cole, she was abandoned at JFK Hospital in agony and without any money for treatment, causing her to seek the assistance of an herbalist four days later.
She was taken to the hospital by a hotel driver, but in a taxicab from Buchanan.
Madam Cole disclosed that a week later, she contacted the hotel management through its Human Resource Manager, Emmanuel Wragboe, and registered her disappointment with them.
Before contacting Wragboe, the management team had rejected her calls for days.
She also informed Wragboe that an herbalist was attending to her since JFK was disinclined to treat her without a deposit.
According to her, the hotel transferred an insignificant amount of L$9,000 to her Lonestar mobile number to underwrite the cost of her treatment.
Wragboe later sent US$100 to Madam Cole, but she explained that the amount wasn’t enough to settle her medical bills, purchase medication, and provide food for her while in the sick bush.
She explained that after a few months in the ‘sick bush’, Hotel Buchanan illegally terminated her services without payment of benefits.
“How can they block my salaries and dismiss me, when I am in sick bush attending to my broken hand?” she inquired.
Madam Cole thinks her dismissal is illegal and that her rights are being violated because she’s a poor woman who doesn’t have anyone to speak for her.
She is appealing to the Government of Liberia, human rights, and women groups, to compel Hotel Buchanan Management to provide her with the necessary benefits as provided for by law.
Madam Cole also disclosed that her hand is not completely healed as she cannot work with her hand and needs support to get proper medication.
Hotel Buchanan corroborated Madam Cole’s dismissal and claimed that she abandoned work.
In a letter dated January 31, 2023, Hotel Buchanan’s Human Resource Manager, Emmanuel Wragboe, informed Madam Cole that it would no longer pay her salary beginning February 2023.
In the letter, approved by the hotel’s General Manager, Ghaleb Zaarour, Wragboe demanded that Cole provide management with her medical reports but in another letter, Wragboe subsequently dismissed Madam Cole.
