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.