Feb 16 2011
Bridget shares her ways to tackle underage maids
We have housed about 20 underage maids. Of these, two attempted suicide, one was convicted of theft, one will be on trial for child abuse, one was persuaded by her employer to have an abortion, and the others were victims of some form of abuse and exploitation.
Domestic work in Singapore is extremely demanding for a village teenager. We are glad the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) has made it clear it will not condone underage workers and placed the onus on employment agencies to prevent such occurrences.
But raising the entry age from 18 to 23 years has led to a shortage of maids and therefore new ways by agencies to beat the rule.
The authorities in Singapore and the maids’ home countries need to work together with greater tenacity to deter this practice.
We are also concerned over why MOM continues to rely on the official passport as proof of age when it is well known that passports from some countries can be doctored.
Furthermore, MOM has penalised only four of the 14 agencies that brought in underage maids last year.
This is not in line with encouraging agencies to guard against recruiting underage workers.
The difficulty for agencies in authenticating the age of inbound workers suggests the need for a checklist of measures that agencies should be held accountable for implementing.
Some agencies and employers compel workers to continue even if they are mentally or emotionally incompetent, or have decided to admit their real age. They do this to discharge the worker’s debt to the agency and avoid disruption to the employer.
Often, agencies threaten workers with imprisonment if they are found to be underage.
Workers who report an agency or employer who has compelled them not to reveal their real age should be offered witness protection and immunity from prosecution.
Where underage women are traded, the agencies in both the home and destination countries should face consequences. For example, the Singapore agency could be blacklisted.
Bridget Tan is the Founder President of HOME (Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics) which provide humanitarian assistance for the effects of ‘crisis’ migration.
One response so far
I agree 100% with Bridget here… It’s utter rubbish if our Sporean agents say that there’s nothing they can do abt the FDW’s actual age… If I as an employer manage to find out the maid’s real age, what does that say abt the agents here?… All you need is to interview the FDW on when did she last graduate from her school, whether she has any working experience before coming to Spore, I’m sure you can calculate the actual age from there…
Here’s the story abt my previous helper… Firstly altho she was big in size, she has a baby face. Then after a few days with me, I realize her actions were pretty childlike, eg: she loves watching cartoons with my daughter who was three years old and even during work in the day, she daydreamed alot, whenever she passes by the toilet mirror she would look at her face, hair… nighttime after 9.30pm, instead of sleeping she’d rather write in her diary till pretty late in the night… she was an ok girl, shy initially, but after a month if she did something wrong and was told off, she tends to talk back in a manner that my MIL felt it was rude…
I’m a very easy employer. I always make sure to respect my helper, in order for her to respect me too… It works both ways. My ex maid before her was with us for almost four years and didn’t give us much problems at all…
So I decided to give her another two months to pick up as much as she could, as like a probation period… but as the two months pass by, it became worse… she simply couldn’t cope, she does things slow, always wasting time on day dreaming or sleeping whenever I step out to pick my kids up from schools or running errands… (her main duties are to do housework, as I’m a full time housewife now, I’m in charge of my kids) I actually caught her doing this on a few occasions, and please bear in mind, my MIL stays with me, and she initially didn’t say anything abt it in the first month, until I spoke to her about it, then my MIL reveal the truth of what has been happening… next, guess what I saw on her postman shoulder bag and her wallet, there were graffitis on the bag and her pair of jeans, like any teenagers, and her wallet has all the disney princesses’ stickers, now, my daughter does not like any of the princesses yet so we have never purchase any stuffs related to them… she’s into KPOP, she has posters of some of the korean pop stars pasted on the inside of her cabinet and she often quarrels with my eldest son who was 9 yrs old back then, and the quarrels are like an elder sister to a younger sibling kind… of course this gives me more reasons to believe that this girl is underage…
So what I did was to have a casual talk with her, asking her which school she was from, how far did she finish her school, either high school or etc… then what did she do after she graduate, what jobs she has handled etc…. and this was what I found out, she studied for exactly 7 yrs, then immediately left home to work in Jakarta as a helper for close to two years before deciding to leave and work in Spore… meaning she finishes her school at the age of 14 years old, then work in Jakarta till she was 16.5 yrs old and came to Spore to work wt me when she was almost almost 17 yrs old… alarming isn’t it??? Imagine your daughter in Spore at that age having to work as a helper… is it feasible? And here we are as employers expected so much from them without even knowing the actual age of the maid…. I find this to be very disturbing.
And when I told the agent about this, they said there was nothing much that they can do bcos it’s all base on the maid’s passport/ID, and since the maids are very desperate to work they would do anything to lie abt their age… DUH!!! Shouldn’t the agents be doing the interviewing properly in the 1st place and not just taking in any maids that comes along?
Btw, my other ex maid was also young when she 1st worked with us. She was a rejected maid and age 19 yrs old, after countless time of asking her about her actual age, but she was a pretty good worker, especially with my kids… and I was working full time back then and hardly at home due to working long hours and sometimes even my weekends are burnt… imagine the amount of things she have to handle… for me as long as she prioritize my kids first, then housework, as long as the basics are done, I’m fine… I could not complain more, as I’m thankful for the extra help that I get from my HELPER….
I feel that the agents have to be fair for both parties involve, be it the maid and the employer!