Madame Chua Lai Keow's complacently self-serving letter regarding her maid's pregnancy (Tue. Oct. 4) requires a response.
Despite being married and a mother of four, Mme. Chua's maid fell pregnant, possibly on her first free day during her work stint in her employment in Singapore. While on one level understandable, the moral outrage implicit in Mme. Chua's account of the matter finally leaves this reader rather aghast. That a maid in a foreign country, who is confined to an apartment with a faux family whom it is her lot to serve like the coolie workers of two generations past, has on the first day of liberation from those conditions found comfort and release in some tender human contact, perhaps ought not completely astound. In place of condemnation, perhaps some understanding might be more charitable. Civilized countries across the world, for example, recognize the human right of sexual contact even for incarcerated prisoners. In Singapore, where prostitution is a legal and sizeable industry, the kind of mores Mme. Chua seeks to uphold might at least seem dubious.
But above all else, to suggest as does Mme. Chua, that one might paternalistically safeguard these foreign workers from their own baser instincts, for their own good, by limiting their freedom of movement and continuing to deny them the most basic right of relief from labour and toil on this account, is nothing short of outrageous. Singapore can only attract dismay and opprobrium in this unfortunate protracted saga involving legitimate human rights for the workforce of maids. There is the real cause for shame.
Mr Pavle Radonic
Joo Chiat Hotel
6344 1101
Mailed today to Straits Times in response to a letter to the editor published by them yesterday.
Madame Chua aint a figment of the author's imagination.
The guess is the acerbity is a bit too harsh for the ST. We shall see.
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