Michelle's report on foreign domestic workers

Foreign domestic workers going overboard

Maids are being abused by their employers?

Maids deserve better treatment not only in terms of decent salary but also in terms of greater respect from their employers?

Many of them have lost their honor and dignity by accepting low wages and succumbing to employers’ abuse and exploitation?

All these may be true to some extent, but think again, have we ever thought of how maids can abuse employers instead?
Now, we have a 14 year-old female student to tell us her very first experience with a maid that her mother decided to hire because they were too busy with earning a living and had no time for the household chores.




“ I had a maid last year, who got sent back home because of her bad behavior. She always acted like she was innocent in front of my parents. When they weren’t at home, she would bring this guy home, which I think is her boyfriend. She didn’t want to let my parents know and she always threatened me not to tell my parents about it. Sometimes, she wouldn’t cook for me and she wouldn’t wash the dishes. She’s also very lazy. She didn’t like cooking when I was hungry. She watches more television than me. One day when my parents came home as my mom was not feeling well, they found my maid’s boyfriend in my room with my maid! My maid didn’t even say sorry but was still arrogant. Then she got sent back home the next day”.

Thank you Sharon, you have given us a clear example of what maids are capable of.

This is not just an opinion or how we judge foreign workers. It is a fact. There are many interviews to prove that such problems exist in Singapore, so many of which we are oblivious to.

Following this, we shall have a 19 year- old NUS student tell us what she faced when she had a maid with her, when she was young, quite a couple of years back. It was a pretty traumatic bully.




“ When I was in primary school, I used to have a maid. She was quite nice at the beginning, but after sometime, she started to be very cold towards me. I was very young, so I didn’t really bother about it. Until one day I came back from school, and my mom told her to wash my school shoes for me cause they were very dirty. Because it was only me and her at home, she scolded me for making my shoes so dirty and she actually hit me , and told me to just wash it myself. I was very young so I didn’t dare to say anything so I just quietly went to wash my shoe but after that incident, she continued being very cold and harsh towards me. She would actually say very mean things about me, like how I was so lazy and no one loves me. And when I was very young, it really hit me hard,, and it really affected me. When she hits me or scolds me, she asks me not to tell my parents bcause the truth is I was just a naughty girl, and if I told them that, I would get scolded. I actually listened to her, stupidly. She was only nice to me when she needed things to send back home. So, every time when she was nice, I thought she was going to change and she would be nicer towards to me, but after one day of being nice to me, she ends up being the same. Thankfully, after about three years being with us, she found another job in Hong Kong and moved there”.

We have very little knowledge how the maids treat their employers at home. In fact, the employers themselves may not know how the maids are treating them. Take for example a maid is unhappy with the employer but she doesn’t express her anger or how she feels. The employer asks the maid asks the maid to get a cup of coffee for him/her. The maid feels unhappy inside and results to spitting into the drink. At the end of the day, the employer would not have known of what the maid is capable of.

What we can conclude from this is that, foreign workers are not as ‘powerless’ as all of us think they are. The media has always been focusing on how some of them are deprived, or suffering. Although some of which are true, we also need to know that they are capable of more than what we think they know. So, instead of assuming that they are always victims of abuse, we need to raise awareness to how they are also able to resort to harming and abusing employers when they want to.

This is Michelle Gwee for Newsradio 938.