By GOH CHIN LIAN
Why are so many employers in Singapore sending back their maids? It
could be that the maid is slow, the agent pushy or the employer
demanding.
WHEN a new maid fails to live up to her employer's expectations, it
may not just be her shortcomings.
The blame could fall on an agent so bent on pushing deals and earning
commissions that he overlooks his customer's needs.
Or the problem could stem from the employer. He may have high
expectations of the maid's ability to understand English and cook
well, while also caring for Junior and grandma.
Add to this mix a better-educated maid who knows her rights and will
not give in so easily to unreasonable demands.
The end result? Last year, 28% of employers terminated the contracts
with their maids within three months. It was 27% on average from 2005
to last year, the Manpower Ministry (MOM) told The Sunday Times. Only
one in five was a first-time employer, it added.
Earlier this month, it outlined measures to tackle the problem in a
country where roughly one in every five households has a maid.
The measures: Introduce a template for biodata of maids so employers
are better informed; and run a settling-in programme for new maids.
The 196,000 maids largely come from Indonesia and the Philippines,
attracted by a monthly pay of S$320 to S$420 (RM750 - RM1,000).
Employers pay a monthly levy of S$265 (RM600). They give up their new
maids for reasons such as they are forgetful, tardy or unhygienic,
said Association of Employment Agencies (Singapore) president Shirley
Ng.
Those who let go of an experienced maid complain that she has poor
attitude, is always on the phone and gets into boyfriend problems, she
added.
But Ng felt the problem can also lie with employers having high expectations.
Employers may also fail to recognise that it will take months for
their maids to adapt to a new environment.
What an employer considers as slowness may be the normal pace of
kampung life that the maid is used to. Forgetfulness may just be her
unfamiliarity with multi-tasking.
Take the case of an employer who accused the new maid of lying when
she did not prepare a vegetable dish, recalled the secretary of
non-profit group Foreign Domestic Worker Association for Skills
Training, William Chew.
She said there were no more vegetables in the fridge. The employer
showed her the bunch of kangkong (convolvulus) inside, only to be told
by the maid that it was for feeding pigs.
Other issues include young employers being unable – unlike their
parents – to speak basic Malay to their Indonesian maids, and
employers not giving instructions on how they want things to be done.
Maid agencies also felt that the MOM requirement that maids pass a
multiple-choice written English test here does not ensure that they
can understand English, and may have a negative effect.
MOM introduced the test in 2005 to raise the quality of first-time
maids, who must pass the test here before they can start work.
Maid agencies observed that most agents in the home country now spend
more time teaching English to the maids, instead of job skills.
The result? The language proficiency of the maid could be limited to
dealing with the sample 400 questions from MOM, and they could have
poor housekeeping skills.
On their part, industry folk said maid agencies could do better to
understand the needs and backgrounds of their customers.
Caring for a baby is different from, say, looking after an elderly
person. A maid who is a mother could be a good babysitter, but to
provide care for the elderly, she should have experience and
compassion, Ng said.
John Gee, president of Transient Workers Count Too, an advocacy group
for migrant workers, is in favour of the biodata template, which he
said will allow employers to make informed choices.
The MOM is working with maid agency accreditation bodies, like the
Association of Employment Agencies (Singapore) and Case- Trust, to
develop the template by June.
But agencies felt that it was one thing to have a template, and
another to ensure the biodata is accurate.
Agencies said maids tend to give model answers in order to secure a
job, and home-country agents are unable to verify their past work
experience.
One way around the problem is for agencies here to make trips overseas
to interview and suss out the candidates.
Nation Employment, which used to see 30% of its customers terminate
their contracts within three months, has cut the rate to 15% over more
than a decade.
It focused on improving the skills of its maids through in-house
training after they arrived here, said Nation's managing director Gary
Chin.
Ultimately, employers need to be understanding.
Housewife Goh Li Lian, 44, for example, said she was tempted last year
to change her new maid from Myanmar for being slow, but decided
against it.
"I understand that when the maids first start, we need to have tonnes
of patience to give both sides time to adjust to each other. So I
stuck it out," said Madam Goh, who has had four Indonesian maids, all
of whom finished two-year contracts. – The Sunday Times/ANN
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