| Letter February 1, 2003 Singapore UNTIL recently, I have stubbonly held on to the view that Singapore employers are generally okay in their treatment of their maids. I believe that on the whole, Singapore employers treat their maids quite fairly, by their own standards. Singaporeans work hard and expect the same of their maids. So if they work their maids half to death, they do not feel guilty about it. However, when I read about a maid being abused, then I cannot help but think that if only one employer abuses her maid, her action negates the kindness 100 or 1000 reasonable employers show their maids. (I am not thinking of the treatment by slave drivers, but treatment by the genuinely caring employers who treat their maids like they are actually human beings.) Our leaders must surely feel strongly about this abuse. The courts feel that an employer who physically hurts her maid, should get 150% of the punishment that would have been meted out to her if the victim was a local woman. Yet, in spite of this additional deterrent, the abuse continues. An employer, losing her cool, slaps her maid hard enough to leave enough evidence to convict her, and ends up going to prison. The police when they are satisfied that they have a strong case, will not let the abuser off. Always (well, almost always) the abuser ends up in prison. But the abuse can be psychological. In this case, the abuser gets away scot free, even though the maid actually goes actually suffers. The employer who is privileged to employ a foreign maid has to give this assurance to Immigration Dept: "I will repatriate her when her work permit expires. And I hereby put up a bond in the amount of $5000 which I shall forfeit if I fail to repatriate my maid." The obligation of Work Permit Office to this employer is: "Okay, so you have cancelled her work permit and want to repatriate her as you have promised to do when a work permit and visit pass was granted to your maid. Well, go ahead, repatriate her." If the maid has worked for two years, repatriation is not so bad. But if her contract is terminated prematurely, before she has recovered her investment (fees paid to her agents to arrange for her to work in Singapore), then sending her home is very cruel. Imagine a maid paying six months of her salary to her agents for the privilege of retaining her salary for the next 18 months. Then after six months, her employer sends her home. One of the reasons maids are abused is that they are not protected by the Employment Act. Traditionally, domestic servants are people who have nowhere to turn to for support and to be employed even as a maid was better than starving or worse. But if the employer ill-treated her, she could always resign and go look for another job. And while she is looking for work, she can depend on the family for support. And so, employers had a weaker hold on them. The foreign domestic worker is not so fortunate. She does not have anywhere to turn to for support if she should be permited to leave her employer and still not have to go home - as is the case now. So an employer wield so much power over her maid. Concerned |
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