KL family beats maid over baby's mosquito bite

KL family beats maid over baby's mosquito bite

KUALA LUMPUR (Agencies): The Malaysian employers of an Indonesian maid beat her with a broomstick because a mosquito bit their baby, reports said Wednesday.

In the latest in a series of maid abuse cases which have shocked many Malaysians, newspapers highlighted the plight of 26- year-old Sri Mulyati Hamid.

The reports carried photos of scars, allegedly inflicted by the employers, on the woman's back.

Mulyati was quoted by the Sun as saying at a news conference on Tuesday that the baby's mother beat her with a broomstick when she saw the mosquito bite. The conference was organized by the Women's Aid Organization (WAO) where she has taken refuge.

She said the baby's father also kicked and beat her when he arrived home.

The maid said the couple hit her with a variety of objects -- a cane, a walking stick, a broom, a mop, shoes, a plate and a feather duster.

"The wife used a rotan (bamboo cane), a walking stick, a broom, a mop, shoes, plates and a feather duster to beat me until I bled," Mulyati was quoted as saying by the Star daily.

She alleged that her woman employer also called her "pig" and "dog" and only fed her a packet of instant noodles once a day.

The man, an airline engineer, kicked and slapped her and the wife pinched her nipples, she said.

Mulyati, who left her employers last month, said the windows of the house in a Kuala Lumpur suburb were kept shut so no one would hear her cries.

"My employer forced me to water the plants and do other chores outside at 2 a.m. so that my bruises would not be seen. She said if anyone found out, she would cut herself with a knife and blame it on me," the Indonesian maid said.

Frightened, she ran away and was taken by a sympathetic passerby to the police, where she was sent to WAO which offers shelter to battered foreign maids.

WAO executive secretary Ivy Josiah said the husband was arrested and was out on police bail. She said her organization was disturbed by persistent cases of attacks on maids.

The government last month announced new safeguards for foreign Muslim maids which includes having non-Muslim employers hiring foreign Muslim maids to sign a pledge to allow them religious privileges.

Rules on hiring Filipinas and Sri Lankans were eased to curb a series of attacks in recent months on maids from mainly Muslim Indonesia.

In one case an Indonesian maid said her boss "branded" her hand with a burning incense stick after accusing her of theft.

Another Indonesian was admitted to a hospital intensive care unit after her female employer allegedly hit her on the head with a rock. The employer, like several others, has been charged.

Some 20,000 maids ran away from their employers in recent years, according to immigration authorities who did not specify the time period.

There are 162,868 foreign maids in the country, mostly from neighboring Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia.

Ivy Josiah said Mulyati's case was the sixth handled by her organization since 1995 but none of the employers were convicted because the Indonesian maids, who were required to testify, were forced to return home when their work permits expired.

She recommended that the government allow abused maids awaiting court cases to remain in Malaysia, and the authorities also issue a guidebook on the rights of domestic workers to employers, as is done in Singapore.