A FILIPINA who sustained horrific injuries in a mini-bus crash at Moniatis in January 2000 had been awarded £370,000 in damages, her lawyers said yesterday.
Telia Marquilencia, 43, who before the accident was a domestic worker in Larnaca, has been left bed-ridden and needing 24-hour medical care for the rest of her life.
Eight Filipinos, including a two-year-old boy, died in the accident on January 30, 2000.
Her lawyer Elena Erotokritou said that before the accident, Marquilencia was an energetic outgoing, friendly single woman who enjoyed going to church and to the cinema.
“She was perfectly normal before the accident,” Erotokritou said. “As a result of the accident she has lost her livelihood, and doctors say there is no potential for recovery or even improvement.”
Marquilencia sustained such serious head injuries and neurological damage that she was left permanently brain damaged, a condition which has not only left her totally dependent on others but has also changed her personality.
Erotokritou said she is now totally disoriented as regards place and time. She has memory lapses, insomnia and is uncommunicative, restless and even abusive at times.
Doctors say her condition is so severe that she needs psychiatric monitoring as well as physical care. Marquilencia is also in danger of suffering from post-traumatic epilepsy and atrophy, and despite months of physiotherapy has not made any progress.
“She is not capable of enjoyment of her life in any sense,” Erotokritou said. “She has to remain in bed for the rest of her life and has to be washed, dressed and fed.”
Now that the compensation case has been settled, Philippines Consul Yiannakis Erotokritou, who is joint administrator of the award with the Cyprus Welfare Department, intends to travel to the Philippines to look for a suitable nursing home where Marquilencia can be cared for.
Her family wants her back in the Philippines and her sister has been in Cyprus to help look after her since August 2000.
“The Consul has informed the Philippine authorities and they are trying to find a suitable place,” Erotokritou said.
Costas Zipitis, the driver of the mini-bus in the Moniatis accident, was jailed for 15 months last November after being fund guilty of causing death by negligence.
The vehicle smashed into a two-metre high concrete barrier on a sharp curve known as the ‘death bend’ between Moniatis and Platres, overturning and skidding 200 metres down the road. The bus reportedly had a problem with the clutch and veered off course.
Zipitis was carrying a group of 36 mostly Filipino day-trippers, including seven children, to Larnaca after a day out in the snow.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
