Grief-stricken parents are having a hard time accepting the loss of their 29-year-old daughter, who was found dead early Monday morning after the major earthquake in Turkey.
It was reported that the body of the Thai woman, later identified as Chaimaiporn Homsantia, from Chaiyaphum, was found under the rubble of a collapsed building in Iskenderun.
This earthquake was considered one of the strongest to hit the region in a century, reaching a magnitude of more than 7.8.
As of Thursday, updated reports put the death toll from the Turkey-Syria earthquake as having passed 17,000, at least 12,873 of whom died in Turkey, while at least 3,162 were killed in Syria.
Following the discovery of Chaimaiporn's body, the Thai embassy coordinated with authorities in Turkey and informed her family of the loss of their daughter.
The victim's 56-year-old mother, Boonchu, told reporters that her daughter had been in Georgia working as a masseuse for more than five years before moving to Turkey when the Covid-19 situation improved.
Her mother said she was last in contact with her daughter at the weekend and had no idea about her daughter's situation until hearing about the quake in a news report.
"We were deply shocked after learning what happened as Nong Dao [the deceased] was a pillar of our family," she said. "I'd like to implore the government to repatriate her body."
Boonsong Thapchaiyuth, sec- retary-general of the Social Security Office, said Labour Minister Suchart Chomklin has conveyed his condolences to the dead woman's family and instructed the SSO to check whether it could provide them with financial assistance.
A check showed the deceased previously worked as a masseuse for Ramada by Wyndham Iskenderun Hotel, and she was covered under Section 33 for salaried employees before she resigned in 2015.
Mr Boonsong said he had told the chief of the Social Security's Chaiyaphum Office to give her old-age pension benefits to her parents.
