Minimum wages to be set for domestic helpers

Minimum wages to be set for domestic helpers

JAKARTA (JP): The city administration plans to issue a ruling regarding minimum wages for domestic helpers to improve their living standards.

H. Soenarjudardji, the municipal administration's secretary for welfare affairs, said during a one-day seminar on increasing protection and wages for domestic helpers on Tuesday that the levels of wages set will not be a burden for employers.

Under the ruling the amount of wages for domestic helpers will be based on the economic conditions of the families for whom they work, Soenarjudardji said.

The ruling is expected to assure that families who employ domestic helpers make an effort to better and protect the welfare of the servants.

"People still consider domestic helpers their helpers in any kind of situation at the house and not as the workers they are supposed to be. That's why we still can find domestic helpers being paid only Rp 20,000 (US$9.09) a month by their employers," he said.

The Regional Minimum Wage for workers which took effect last month for the Jakarta area is Rp 4,600 per day.

A census conducted in 1994 set Jakarta's population at 8.99 million. It also reported that there were 1.5 million women working as domestic helpers.

Ika Siagian, a speaker at the seminar, noted in the presentation of her paper that in many cases domestic helpers act not only as housekeepers who have to cook, do the laundry and other jobs, but also as "mothers" to their employers' children.

"The situation of domestic helpers in Jakarta generally remains poor, with many of them still required to be on call 24 hours a day. Imagine, they are still ordered to work when they should be sleeping," Soenarjudardji said.

He pointed out that the city administration was striving to improve the quality of maid servants by providing a training program for them. He explained that the training program is designed to help put domestic helpers in a stronger bargaining position and to reduce the amount of abuse they face currently. (31)