S10038110E Foreign Domestic Workers (FDWs)

Personally, I’ve not had a maid before. However, I have relatives who have employed maids and thus formulated some sort of opinions on them. I think they are very pitiful because they have to wake up as early as 5AM in the morning and only to retire at midnight. One of them had to look after 3 children between the ages of 2 to 8 and she had to shuffle between sending the youngest to and fro from childcare, looking after their welfare, cooking for them, cleaning the house, doing the laundry etc, all these while without a single bit of rest. If I were her I might have just given up. With a workload like this, is it necessary for us to be so stingy and give her 83 cents per hour? Although, I have no idea what her pay is like, she has been contributing diligently to the household. The youngest daughter has grown extremely attached to the maid and is usually at a loss when she goes back to her homeland.

I feel that well FDWs are helpful for situations like these; the kids should not develop such a strong bond that they become inseparable with them. It is important to remain a certain distance such that the kids (especially the younger ones) do not see them as an alternative for a motherly-figure when their real mothers are not around. Parents such learn to wean their kids off the maids so that they can be more independent and not rely on them all the time or become lazy and ignorant to basic household chores.

Also, as the conference has highlighted the unfortunate plight of FDWs, I believe that trust is a significant factor when employing maids. So I have an interview now with Bettina who mostly has had positive experiences with FDWs.

How long have you had your current maid?

Erm, about 5 years

Do you have previous maids?

Yupp

So why did you change your maid?

Various reasons, some wanted to go back home, some after their contract expired my parents didn’t want to renew, and one was sick, so she had to go back :)

Have you had any bad experience with your previous maids?

Erm, not like veryvery bad, but like perhaps just sometimes little things

Are you satisfied with your current maid?

Alright, there are both good and bad points I guess.

So, what are they good points and bad points?

Erm, one thing that’s really good, is that she’s honest like, we can leave money around and stuff around, and it wouldn’t go missing. She cooks well, and sometimes she’s nice

But some bad things are that sometimes I don’t like having someone else around the house, and like I guess since she’s been around for so long, sometimes she can get over familiar, like if you ask her to cook Maggie noodles, she’ll stare at you and slam the pots and pans around while cooking. And I guess coz the kitchen’s like her place, so if we use the kitchen, she won’t be very happy.

So your family trusts her a lot?

yupp

How often does your maid get a day off and how much is her pay like?

She gets every Sunday off, and I’m not sure how her pay is like, but I know that we increase her pay every year by quite a bit.

So, does your maid have a handphone?

Yupp, I think my family treats her quite well. Like, she eats before we do, and like when she’s grocery shopping, she can buy whatever she wants too. She sleeps around 9PM and wakes up around 7AM, unless like we really need her help for something. And when like we have a special occasion, and my mom buys things like steak or something for home, we buy for her too.

Do you sometimes feel that your maid has too many privileges?

Not really. I mean, we treat her really nicely, and we don’t mind, but when she like shows attitude, then we feel like, she’s got so many privileges, so she shouldn’t be like that.

Have you told her not to show attitude? Like how you sometimes feel displeasure with her?

Nope, I’ve never. But my mom once did tell her like if she’s unhappy about something she should tell up, but don’t show attitude. And she’ll be nicer for a few days, but sometimes she gets upset again. But we kinda understand coz I think sometimes its coz she just misses her family and all. And she’s the only one in the family who’s working now, coz her family members quit their work and she’s supporting them.

Do you think maids should be given better treatment, to treat them like one of us and accept her mood swings?

We do treat her like one of us, but mood swings-wise, its just like sometimes not fair I guess? Hehe.

Why do you think it is not fair?

Not really not fair, but like, in a way, we do treat her reallyreally nicely, like she gets to watch tv and all, but like in a way, we are paying her and stuff.

While Bettina’s case has been positive, I have another friend who had a maid that abused her employer’s trust. As a child, my friend was beaten constantly be her maid and even got locked in the cupboard. Since she was quite the naughty kid, her mother thought that she was lying when she complained to her about it. This had resulted in even more punishment even though she was telling the truth. Her maid has always put up a front when her mum is around and the mother has also unfortunately given her the permission to punish when she does something wrong. For minute things like not finishing her food or being noisy (as all kids are), she was being hit by a cane and got chased around the house by the maid.

Because of this experience, instead of distrusting maids, she has gone on to be skeptical of her mother. She realizes the sympathetic predicament that FDWs are in and well she obviously knows what her maid did was wrong, she bears little grudges and is more upset and disappointed of the fact that her mother would rather trust the maid than her own child. Whatever the maid has done have left a psychological scar and there are repercussions from this incident. Now she knows better than to voice her own thoughts and opinions and is rather reticent and secretive.

From a third person’s point of view, I feel that well the mother may be at fault as well, the maid’s role in her painful upbringing is paramount as she spent more time with her than her mum. It all stemmed from the maid’s action of abusing the employer’s trust and treating the kids in any manner she wanted. If she has refrained from doing so, the mother would not have seen her kid as a liar and my friend would not be so withdrawn and unresponsive. She now indulges in self-mutilation to get rid of the void her mother left.

I feel that the conference was rather biased because they only showed us the inadequate conditions they lived in and the difficulties they face when working as FDWs. It would help if they had not dramatized the unfortunate incidents and proceeded further on to inform us about the negative traits that some FDWs possess. Some cases are very well black and white, in terms of maid abuse or maids cheating on their employers, but what about matters that fall into the ‘grey’ area? Have we been too quick to judge and decide who’s right or wrong and neglected true victims, like in the case of my friend? I hope that in future we would not take maids too lightly as humans with simple ideas. But that doesn’t mean that we should treat them as lower-class people who are less educated and therefore unintelligent.

There should be equal treatment for FDWs and the government needs to enforce more laws for both the employers and the employees. I hope that solutions can be created soon to ease the burden FDWs and employers carry.

Thank you.

Lim Wwei-