RP plans to provide loans for returning maids

RP plans to provide loans for returning maids

Helen Luk, Associated Press, Hong Kong

The Philippine government will offer loans to Filipino
migrants who want to return home and start businesses because of
a proposed tax on foreign maids working in Hong Kong, a Filipino
union spokeswoman said Sunday.

Philippine Foreign Secretary Blas Ople met with union
representatives here Sunday, after meeting Friday with Hong Kong
political leader Tung Chee-hwa to lobby against the proposed tax.
He failed to get any assurance from local officials it would not
be imposed.

Ople told the Filipino union representatives that maids
affected by the proposal could go home and apply for a loan, said
Connie Bragas-Regalado, chairwoman of the migrant workers' group
United Filipinos in Hong Kong.

Bragas-Regalado, however, was unimpressed.

"This can't improve the conditions of the migrant workers
because it's a loan," Bragas-Regalado said. "We have to earn
money to pay for the loan, so it's just giving false hope to us."

An estimated 153,000 Filipinos work as live-in maids in Hong
Kong, along with 70,000 Indonesians and smaller numbers of Thais
and Nepalese. All four nations have been angered by the proposed
tax, as the maids typically send money home.

Some Hong Kong political parties have proposed taxing migrant
maids between HK$400 (US$51) and HK$750 a month to help ease the
territory's ballooning budget deficit. Local media have also
reported that instead of a tax, foreign maids might have their
wages slashed by 5 percent.

Thousands of foreign maids have joined numerous protests,
fearing a cut in their minimum monthly salary of HK$3,670.

"We can bear no more. We are workers, not slaves," Bragas-
Regalado said at a small rally on Sunday. "It is the height of
cruelty to ask those struggling to make ends meet to bear the
pain of Hong Kong economic problems."

The Hong Kong government hasn't announced a decision on any of
the proposals.