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.