Measures needed to better protect domestic helpers

Many foreign people move to Hong Kong to take up a job. However, when most of Hong Kong's many thousands of domestic maids do so, they are abused right from the start. It is high time this widespread and systematic abuse is curtailed by introducing more stringent protective measures, to give them a fairer chance of experiencing decent employment and living conditions in this wealthy and sophisticated city.

To begin with, as they are obliged to live in a family home, the issue of work permits for foreign domestic helpers should be limited to only those employing families that can provide a separate room for a helper to stay in. That would exclude thousands of small Hong Kong employer's homes - where the poor women must sleep on the family sofa, kitchen floor, balcony or in some shocking cases which recently came to light, inside a cupboard or on the toilet floor!

In the cheap but space-confined public housing, meant for the low-income households, a live-in servant often fares worse than her peers working and living in private housing apartments. Obviously, these modest public housing apartments were not designed to house resident domestic servants; there is simply no space for them. Indeed, space for live-in maids would likely not figure in the public-housing provision of any other cities around the world either. An associated issue is how can a supposedly low-income family, living in public housing, afford a live-in domestic servant? This requires some serious reconciling.

Enforcing this proposed new own-room requirement would result in many local families having to make do without a live-in maid in future. If the only way they can house one is by having her sleep on the family sofa, then that unacceptable provision of housing should preclude their employing a foreign domestic helper. An advantage of having fewer foreign maids in Hong Kong would be that parents, and grandparents, would be obliged to spend more time looking after their children or grandchildren, rather than delegating most child care to the maid, as is frequently the case now.

Many a maid in Hong Kong is put to work every waking hour. Since so many have no room of their own to retreat to, they have no place to rest. It is also totally unacceptable that not a few maids face verbal, physical or even sexual abuse by their employers here. Again, having their own room to retreat to would be a step in the right direction in protection from such vile abuses. Those cruel families which treat the maid as a slave, requiring almost 24/7 work from her, should be precluded from employing a live-in maid. The hours and types of work required should be specified exactly in their employment contracts, and enforced by an impartial review organization.

To their credit, a concerned group of Hong Kong University students recently conducted surveys about the plight of domestic helpers here. Calling themselves SAFE - "Students Against Fees and Exploitation" - they discovered that for more than 70 percent of maids responding, their employment agencies charged them excessive placement fees. Few of us would relish or accept having to pay a hefty fee to an employment agency just to land a new job. However, illegal though it is, a majority of our domestic maids are abused in this way. Their agency charges them the equivalent of many months' salary, meaning that from day one in their new modestly paid job they are mired in debt. Also illegally, the agencies often hold the new employee's passport until they have extracted full fees from her. Clearly, only the employer should pay a recruitment agency fee; the agencies should be prohibited from charging the new employee any fee whatsoever; and a governmental body should strictly enforce that new rule.

Our police force has recently achieved some success in restricting the criminal activities of loan sharks, who prey on these vulnerable maid victims. Continued vigilance, especially involving caring employers, will be needed to put an end to this unpleasant category of further exploitation of some of Hong Kong's poorest paid workers.

The numbers of victims in Hong Kong are startlingly large. With some 350,000 foreign domestic helpers employed here, the scale of such abuses is shockingly widespread. The authorities, perhaps in cooperation with their enforcement counterpart bodies in the mother countries of these maids, need to take more active steps to better protect Hong Kong's army of domestic servants. The activities of local employment agencies also need to be more tightly scrutinized.

For all other foreign workers in Hong Kong, a period of seven years of work and residence here will entitle them to permanent residency status. Unfairly, this provision is not made available to our domestic helpers. That prohibition is manifestly unjust and needs to be abolished soon.