' Pembantu rumah ’ doing all kinds of jobs

THE Malaysian Association of Foreign Maid Agencies (Papa) is avoiding the core cause of maid abuse by resorting to reasoning race and religious differences as the cause of the problem, just as a politician would.
We believe that Papa is merely trying to strengthen their cause and business security as being the only legal and rightful ‘central processing unit’ for foreign maids.
I move around the country a lot and mix with various levels of the Malaysian community and I also get to help some foreign workers in the course. Let us look around and see where foreign female workers are employed.
They work mostly in restaurants, pasar malams, car wash, provision shops, mini-markets, wet markets, hawker centres or they are employed by single parents who can’t even afford a decent life for themselves, leave alone a maid. Some are employed to take care of old folks, bedridden to the extent that the maid has to wash their soiled bottom, never mind the heavy lifting involved. They are others doing office cleaning, house cleaning, facility cleaning, working in landscape industry, vegetable farms and even puppy breeding homes.
And yet when we look at their passports and their work permits, it states ‘Pembantu Rumah’. How can this happen? These foreign maids who enter the country thinking that they are going to be employed as house maids end up being treated like slaves. After all, the work that they have to do in the list above, they also have to take care of the household chores when they get back home, including cooking, washing more than one car, scrubbing drains, gardening and taking care of toddlers.
Can Papa explain how foreign female workers brought in as maids end up doing all these? To see the truth, all Papa or immigration officers have to do is to just walk around any pasar malam, pasar pagi, hawker centres and restaurants to check their passports. To these employers, paying RM400 for 18 to 20 hours work is a bargain!
And now, they say maids should not be given day-off every week. While the rest of the world must have a day-off, they say the maids shouldn’t.
We are a Hindu family and we have a Muslim Indonesian maid. She has been with us for 10 years now. She’s going home for the coming Ramadan just as she has done many times over the years. She would return to continue working with us.
To us, she is not just a maid but also an important part of the family as she has taken care of our children, especially our 10-year-old boy since he was a baby, our household, our belongings and food in good times and hard times.
The point to note here is that foreign maids are humans just like us.
Give her a weekend off if she wants. Are we so lazy and spoilt that we can’t take over the household chores for the weekend. Are we so apathetic and hard that we must enslave her 24-seven. She is a human too and she has her needs to rest and recover in body and mind, to meet her friends/relatives, to buy some personal things, shopping or just plain hanging around to clear the mind and stress. Then she’ll be back to serve you happily for another six hard days. It is when we enslave and lock them up that they will resort to do something that you would not want her too.
My advice is don’t employ teenagers as maids. Employ middle-age women as they fare better and are experienced housekeepers, mature and toned down in life that fit them for the functions of a maid. Maids come from living conditions where they have never seen basic electrical or electronic equipments and tools that we take granted for, such as electrical irons, cookers ovens. Don’t expect them to know how to use these things. They don’t know how to iron your clothing or do your laundry. Teach them to. Maids don’t come knowing how to cook your Malay, Chinese or Indian food. Give them time to learn.