Nation made lazy by reliance on domestic helpers

Nation made lazy by reliance on domestic helpers

The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

To guarantee her new housemaid, Lilis, 18, would come back to
work after the Idul Fitri exodus, housewife Fifin Yuliati, 27,
had to shell out more money for Lilis, who earned Rp 300,000
(US$30) a month on top of free meals and shelter.

During the Idul Fitri holiday, however, Fifin had to manage
her domestic affairs and her three-month baby herself, while her
husband was not much help.

Deprived of Lilis, she had to run around the house, from one
room to another, doing laundry to attending to her screaming
baby. When she returned to her washing, she found that she had
forgotten to turn off the water so the room was already flooded.

"Eventually, I decided to ask my sisters-in-law to help during
the holiday. The deal was I had to buy them Idul Fitri apparel,"
Fifin, who lives at Bukit Golf housing complex, Cimanggis, West
Java, was quoted as saying by Antara newswire.

Another family, couple Trisnanu and Nining, with three
children, adopted a different strategy for Idul Fitri.

"I have taught my children to be independent every time our
housemaid goes home for Idul Fitri," Nining told Antara.

She said that, years ago, the children were too young to help
her with difficult chores, but now that they were old enough,
they could take them on.

In developed countries the cost of hiring domestic helpers is
high; Nining's household management, however, is common practice
here in Indonesia, but her method was unusual.

"Lots of job seekers in Indonesia are unskilled -- they cannot
find employment other than in the domestic sector," social pundit
Imam Prasodjo told The Jakarta Post.

"The labor supply here is so abundant even middle- and lower-
income bracket families can afford domestic helpers," said Imam,
who once studied at Brown University, Rhode Island, U.S. and took
his family there.

"It's convenient and cheap and an indulgence to have domestic
helpers -- of course people have then," he added.

When he was in the U.S., his friends were bewildered upon
hearing he had a housemaid and a chauffeur at home. They thought
Imam came from a super-rich family.

"I told them it's common in Indonesia to have domestic
helpers," he said.

There is a wide variation in the wages paid to such helpers,
ranging from Rp 300,000 to Rp 500,000 on top of free shelter and
meals.

If they are lucky, employers pay for their health care
expenses, retirement fund, training and give them days off.
Nevertheless, not many housemaids are that lucky.

With no regulations nor regular monitoring, housemaids are
prone to abuse violation of their rights.

"It's a dilemma, though. To implement strict regulation of,
for example, the minimum wage, every household generates a
different workload, so the appropriate minimum wage would be
difficult to measure," Imam said.

Imam added that when his family was in the U.S. he and his
wife, who also studied at university, had to share chores and
take turns tending to their baby.

"Because domestic helpers are costly here, people grow
accustomed to efficient household management. We cooked simpler
food here and we never ironed clothes," Imam said, adding that
chicken nuggets saved him much time while in the U.S.

Meanwhile, in Indonesia, it can take at least 40 minutes to
cook a relatively simple nasi goreng (fried rice).

"The phenomenon of domestic helpers is indicative of the
nation's low levels of education. Many people do not even
complete elementary school, let alone junior high school," Imam
said.

At the same time, he added, the government did not make an
effort to provide jobs for the large numbers of unskilled.

Left with few other options, the unskilled resort to working
as domestic helpers in cities, even seeking work as such abroad.

"Spoiled by the ready availability of cheap labor, people
here, of course, don't really bother to run their households
efficiently," Imam said.