RI maids plunge to deaths in Singapore

RI maids plunge to deaths in Singapore

Reuters, Singapore

Two Indonesian maids have fallen to their deaths from high-rise apartments in Singapore in separate incidents over the past week, Indonesia's embassy said on Friday.

The deaths bring to 100 the number of Indonesian women who have died after plunging from high-rise apartments in Singapore since December 1999, while either hanging out laundry or washing windows or committing suicide, embassy officials said.

Often regarded as an inexhaustible underclass who are cheap and compliant, Singapore's 140,000 foreign domestic workers make the affluent Southeast Asian city-state one of the world's top employers of maids.

Most are drawn from the poverty of the Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and other neighboring nations.

One maid identified only as Murwati fell from a 28th floor of an apartment on June 19, while another, Sriatun Sulaeman, fell from the 9th floor of another block on June 23, an official said.

Alarmed by rise in number of deaths, Indonesia is building a US$1.2-million school on the nearby island of Batam for its domestic workers before allowing them to work in Singapore homes.

In classrooms resembling a typical Singapore apartment, young women will hang laundry from bamboo poles stretching from make- believe high-rise windows or learn how to bathe babies. They will take tests on at least 600 English words.

Prospective employers of maids in Singapore now have to attend a seminar on how to properly treat their staff and also pass a test which questions what they have learnt.