Steph Pang T07

Steph Pang T07
(Money of the FDWs: Where did it go?)



My family has a long history of hiring FDWs (foreign domestic workers), whereby we most probably had like 7 to 8 maids before and I think we are quite experienced in this area.

Now, our FDWs leave their homes, their families, their children to travel across the globe to work for somebody, for only one aim, which is to earn money and make sure their families lives’ are better. They have dreams of buying land, building houses and getting their children in better schools with the money they earn. It may seem little to us, but to these FDWs, they are considered as millionaires once they go back to their home countries. So for this dream, they had to do what they had to do; which is leave their homes and come over here to work for a number of years in order to get more money to realize that dream of theirs.

Well, my first maid, T, was here when I was like 6 or 7, I couldn’t remember. She came, a confident woman and earned my mother’s trust, and gradually as the years went by, her pay was increased by first 50dollars, 100dollars, 200 to 300dollars. Why, her total pay for a month on her last year working with us, which was also the 7th year we had her working with us, was 650 dollars, which is twice the amount of a newly hired maid.

Now, T was a very confident woman as mentioned. She is not shy at all and was always making new friends with people in our neighbourhood. Not that it’s a bad thing, but T would chat up other male foreign workers who were hired by the government to clear our drains or plant some plants around the neighbourhood.

There’s this one guy T got interested in. He was a drain clearer as they call it, and also from T’s hometown. The guy expressed interest in T, and they started dating on the days she got off from working at my house. T would dress up nicely and meeting him by the side of our house, and off they went, going somewhere together.

T changed, according to my mother, after she met the guy. She would come back and hog the phone, calling the guy day and night, and not doing much housework. On the days where she had to be at home, she’d call his family using our house phone and convey his messages for them and talk to them for hours, after talking to her family for hours. She was not as diligent as before and my mother noticed that, even though she denied it, there were footprints of male’s boots in our house and quite muddy as well. My mother knew, but just kept quiet for T has been with us for so long, and she respected that.


Things got worse when the guy asked T to marry him. She was of course, on cloud nine. She spent more time making long overseas calls, to his and her families, discussing their marriage, and I remembered times where my father would shake his head whenever the phone bill has arrived. We didn’t ask her to pay for it and her calls could go up to 100 or 200 per call, it being overseas. And not just one time a month she called; she called a dozen times. My mother knew that the guy cannot be trusted, and tried to talk T out of it but T was too happy to listen. She quit on her own accord and demanded her pay from my parents, and went home, with only marriage on her mind.

But, it’s not so happy after all. She called back after 3 months she went home to tell us that she has reached home and after talking to my mom for a while, she started crying. This was unexpected as she was a very confident lady and would not break down easily. Well, after talking to her for a while and consoling her, my mother found out that the guy she was supposed to marry actually cheated her out of her money. All her 7 years’ of hard work gone, with nothing left for her own children and old mother. Apparently, she went to meet him the day after she landed in her home country, and he insisted that she pay for the wedding, and went through all her belongings and took all her money away, after which he kicked her out of her house, slamming the door in her face. There was no marriage at all; it was all a lie to get her money.

Quite sad, isn’t it? All the hard work you’ve put in, all the waiting and all the time spent in another country working so hard, washing, cleaning… now all your efforts are wasted, and you’re left with nothing.

Another maid of mine, Y, came and worked for us for 2 years, and like T, she went home a millionaire. Y is a good person and very quiet and shy, and was good enough. She showed me pictures of her families and pictures of her house, which she wanted to redecorate and make it better for her family. She had 4 children, the oldest being 15 and the youngest 3 at that time, and a husband. She worked very hard at our place, with only to support her children to better schools and higher education and make their home a better place for them.

But things were not happy as well for Y. Her husband called a few times, while she was working here, and made her send money over to him. First it was their oldest son being in a hit-and-run accident and had to get admitted in the hospital, second it was her old sickly mother who needs medical attention and needed money for that and soon, he had no reason but just demanded it from her. She always put down the phone in tears, and pleaded with my mother to let her take her pay first and please help her send it back to her husband.

While, when she went home, she was all very happy at the idea of seeing her children after so long, and planning to build a better house for them. In her phone call back to us, she said that she spent two days to go home, and these two days she dreamt about so many things, better education, better clothes, better food…etc. But she went home in a shock! Once she reached home, all her fellow villagers crowded around her, demanding money from her, saying that her husband owe them money and had ran away. Not believing that at first, she lied to them, saying she have got no money, and ran inside her house. A bigger shock was in line for her, as she saw her house empty, with no more furniture and her eldest son, was lying on the floor, nearly dead.

According to her, her son had no food for about a week as there was no money for him to get food. His father has sold away all the furniture and gambled away the money she sent back. There was no hit-and-run accident; her mother was fine. Her three younger children were taken away by their father, her husband, and god knows where they are now. She said some told her that her husband, heavily in debt, sold his children away.

Now all the money Y had left had to go to his debtors, as they came knocking on her door every single day. All her dreams were shattered, and she was back to square one again.

Now what I learnt from such stories is that FDWs have not much knowledge about keeping their money safe. Their hard-earned money. They do not really know what is to have a bank account and what is investment, or even what is to have their money kept safely somewhere. Why, Y told me the safest place she could think of putting her money was in her shoe!

As a result, they are cheated by people whom they though loved them, they are cheated of their money. The money whereby they worked so hard for. All of that, was gone the minute they touched down in their home countries. Is that fair to the FDWs who worked for so long in some foreign country only to get cheated all of their money when they go back? Not only that, some illegal agencies also cheat them out of their money, not giving them the money when they got it from the employer and making them work for another decade of years before they can get only like half of what they had been given.

What I feel is that FDWs should be taught of their rights and also, should be taught to keep their money safe, away from the those greedy ones who had their eyes on their money only. Legal agencies or the government should educate them on money matters and teach them on how to keep their money safely like in a bank, instead of in a shoe or under a cabinet. Only then, can the FDWs’ hard-earned money be guranteed and be brought back home to realize their dreams.



i dont know which works, try

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe1ZBkTviWw

or this