When Indonesian maid abused by employer recently Malaysian government seems to over-react by enforcing one-day leave requirement in a week out of nowhere. Though there might be reasons behind it, most employers seem to disagree with such sudden move. I’m one of them.
My question is simple, how by giving one day weekend to them can reduce the risk of being abused? It doesn’t seem to solve neither symptom nor root causes in any angles at all!
There must be various reasons why ‘certain’ maid been abused or punish by ‘certain’ employer like what we discover from media. Though what we heard can be due to the employer try to release some stress to her maid, the truth can be far from it.
Remember this, media is nothing more than just speculators that tend to twist some facts to make it more sensational & commercial when they couldn’t come up with the full story fast enough.
What if the employer did that because her Indonesian maid:
1. hit her child like crazy when she left alone with the kid? There are cases where the owner record such acts using their hidden camera in their living room when they off to work. This can happen especially if you have a small kid that is so spoiled and keep on crying NON-STOP when you were away.
2. stole her jewellery worth tens of thousands even if she had locked the room? Guess what, this is very-very normal upon listening real cases after cases from my closed friends. The latest one I heard was that particular maid hide those stolen jewellery in the cake just before she plan to ‘tapau’ the cake to her kampung.
3. brought in boyfriend to your room and have sex with air-cond switched-on? This might be little bit rare cases but it happened. If it happens indeed, you are living with potential HIV parasites. Though it can’t be transmitted by regular ‘touch’, blood transmission to your bleeding kids can bring harm!
4. not doing her job as she should. I have a friend whose maid- when she came back home from work -is well sleeping while the house was like a broken ship. Her baby was left alone playing in a messy living room. Let alone taking the baby out (without permission) to the neighbour’s house to have chat with the neighbour’s maid. Worse, leaving the baby alone in the house while the maid goes out to meet somebody God knows who for the whole day.
One thing about being Malaysian is that we tolerate too much to a point that when things went wrong all the blame befall us despite all the good things we did (hope am wrong).
Sometimes make me little bit disappointed when Indonesian government demand some explanation; we tend to be nervous unnecessarily and “say sorry” without trying to defend at all.
What about those Indonesian that create social problems like above mentioned? Is sending them back to their country is good enough?
Or, should we at least highlight it in public media about it so that it can get some attention too?
I’m not saying all Indonesian maid posses any one of above habits or attitude; of which the same assumption should be held when bad things happened to the maid because of the employer misbehavior.
However, the problem is media won’t show to the public how some very good employer treat her maid like family like give her handphone for easy communication, bring along in fine diner at hotels or restaurants, have holiday & cinema together or even giving thousands of ringgits to reduce her burden of their loan from the loan shark!
I know we are living in negative world but come on… some positive ions is all it needs to neutralize the negative sentiment.
Keep on highlighting how bad other Malaysian employee in newspaper will definitely bring more harm than good. Its so natural for Indonesian government to respond “No More Indonesian Maid in Malaysia” when they saw cases after cases their own people beaten up.
For me, the real reasons for such maid abuse can be due to mismatch in employer & employee expectation. It’s just like you get an offer letter from a hospital asking you to serve as a surgeon but then when you signed-up 2-years contract, your boss give you a toilet brush.
This is where the role of agent is very-very critical.
When we first decided to bring in maid in our home, we communicated with our so called agent what is our expectation. The agent then will try to understand ‘who are we’ and ‘what the maid will be’ so that when he went back to Indonesia, he will try to look for suitable candidate.
Upon several candidates that he had, he chose one with the most credentials. And before bringing in her here, he explained what kind of people are we (good engineer? Haha), what are our expectations (take care of our babies) and the risk involved (be patient when the kids crying all day long).
The idea is for the maid to make up her mind if the job is suitable.
However, due to greedy maid agent (both countries) nowadays, most employers end up taking extra risk by taking any maids without proper preparation. Worse, there are agents that make some back-door agreement with the maid to runaway after the confirmation period; promising them other better jobs if they did that. Worst, the employer can’t claim back the deposit on top of jewellery been stolen already.
Putting that in perspective, the maid will be the innocent victim and the employer will be the scapegoat when something goes wrong over-and-over again while the agent laughing all their way to the bank.
If we don’t stop this, the same situation will occur at the same frequency in the future, just like it happened in the past.
Putting such agreement in black and white upon signing the contract might help I guess. Better if both government further regulate these maid-agent business to reduce (if not avoid) such occurrence.
What you think?
Leave a Reply