Regulations and Safeguards

 

Reviewing the classifieds here for Jogja Sumiyatie this morning brought a small, minor surprise. After earlier having worked twelve years as a maid and lost a substantial part of her savings back home in some kind of shonky investment, Sumiyatie is considering a return to Singapore. The thought had been to try to obviate the rapacious Maid Agencies, save some money and take firmer control of her placement. A personal advertisement in the paper, starting with the English language Straits Times; an expatriate employer sometimes a better possibility for less slave-driven assumptions. Let the employers come to you, inverting the power equation: the maid interviewing the employer. Singaporeans are crying out for maids. There has been trouble with abuse and competition from other countries of the region offering better pay and conditions. Consequently, no-one to cook, clean, care for children & parents. In this heat. The classifieds full of agencies advertising their ready and willing workers, of all language groups, experienced, biometric data prepared, willing to bend over backwards for a crust/bowl of rice. $500 and up many lured existing maids for transfer opportunities. One of them brazenly enticed employers with NO OFF DAY... From January 1 this year the minimum wage for domestic helpers was set at $450 monthly. On top of that employers pay a surcharge to government, something around 20-25%. And there is now a mandated free day every week. Legislated. L. A. W law. If the maid is required to work on her free day this is a matter of negotiation and payment required — $20 minimum. This particular agency too busy to read the newspaper or keep up with newfangled laws changing every five minutes.

         Another problem of enforcing new regulations likewise reported today. A new-comer to Singapore takes time to become accustomed to the sight of dark-skinned or Chinese foreign workers carted in the rear of trucks and lorries like sticks of wood; like slaves to the cotton/paddy fields; prisoners to the execution yard, morning, noon and deepest night. Sleeping many of them slumped over, bunched tight, jumping promptly at their stop chop-chop no time to lose. Company tees often, dirty and ragged, beat and drained. A good while it takes to leave off blinking and head-shaking at this common sight. In Geylang the witnessing is unavoidable because that is where the dorms are located, twenty or thirty bunked in a room. There might be new regs now seeking to limit the congestion. Just as there is for the transport of workers in the lorries: so many square feet per worker strictly mandated (as for the chickens in the coops); such and such height clearance, shelter and protective railings. No worker must be transported otherwise &etc. Nevertheless, “187 passengers were injured or killed while travelling in the rear of open lorries and in cargo decks last year, up by 45 percent from 129 in 2011." (Saturday 26 October 2013, S. T. Home section, B1)