Shattered dreams on Island Shangri-La

Shattered dreams on Island Shangri-La

John Aglionby, Guardian News Service, Karawang and Singapore

Coming from a small village in West Java armed only with a junior highschool diploma, Ira Sumira thought that being a maid in wealthy Singapore would be her way out of Indonesia's poverty trap.

"The recruiters said I would get lots of money and great experience," she said. "It is just what I wanted."

But Ira would not wish her "great experience" on her worst enemy. Four months after she landed in Singapore she was back in Indonesia, having endured two terrifying bosses.

They first forced the then 18-year-old Muslim to eat pork, saying that chicken was too expensive, and threatening to hit her if she refused to violate her religious beliefs. "I was also given no days off, they said I couldn't go out, I couldn't communicate with Indonesians, and that they would report me if I did."

After a couple of months and a handful of beatings, she managed to move to another family, only to find it was worse.

"I slept in the dining room on a thin mattress like a carpet. I had no privacy," she said. "Whenever I did anything wrong, like putting the rubbish in the wrong place, they stabbed the top of my head with a screwdriver. They did it so much I eventually fainted."

The Indonesian embassy got her home, she says, "but I was too afraid to report anyone, so they escaped punishment".

It would be wrong to say that all 140,000 foreign maids in Singapore endure what happened to Ira. Indeed, there are tens of thousands of young Asian women, mainly Indonesians, Filipinas and Sri Lankans, who return home with bulging bank accounts and fond memories of work on the island.

Undoubtedly, there are unscrupulous and dishonest maids who are either lazy or show little inclination to adjust to their new environment. But the first conviction, late last month, of a Singaporean for killing his maid, and recent stories of abuse, including a woman who got so angry with her maid that she bit off one of her nipples, have disturbed this usually tranquil country.

Although statistics on abuse suggest that the problem is declining- there were 157 reported cases in 1997 and only 41 last year - even the government's most sycophantic supporter, the Straits Times, remains unconvinced. "There have been sexual assaults, humiliations inflicted by employers' brattish children, forced labor in multiple households, withholding of pay as punishment for supposed incompetence," it said. "It is surmised that many maids who speak no English ... suffer in silence."

Chew Kim Whatt, president of Singapore's biggest maid agency association, reckons that half its 700-plus agencies are sub- standard and 45 per cent of employers "have a mindset problem". "They don't know how to treat their domestic workers," he says, adding that it will take three to five years for any change. Meanwhile, about 60,000 maids were in danger of abuse, he added. "They're shy, they're simple-minded, they come from isolated areas, they might not know anyone in Singapore. So the onus is on the employers."

The manpower ministry is addressing the issue, but it's approach is directed towards controlling and improving its own citizens, not protecting workers from abuse. The penalty for abuse has been increased 150 per cent, first-time employers must now undergo training and agencies must register within two years.

"What we want is that the employer understands that this is an employee coming to work in their house," the junior labor minister, Ng Eng Hen, said. "The threshold of reasonableness needs to be adjusted ... I think it will be a generational change." But he denied that maids were seen as a commodity which generated US dollars 28.6m a month from the maid levy imposed on employers.

Lack of protection

Foreign maids were not protected by the Employment Act, unlike locals working for cleaning services: they are not guaranteed a minimum wage, days off, maximum working hours or the right to form trade unions. One columnist recently revealed their lack of protection by showing that animals in Singapore have better rights and more powerful support.

Much of the blame must also be pinned on the agencies in Indonesia, although its foreign minister, Hassan Wirayuda, strongly believes the problem is Singapore's, "They have good law enforcement agencies. Let them deal with it."

There is little regulation of the recruitment agencies. Many treat clients like slaves. The trainees are often packed into a room with only a couple of toilets, not allowed to leave the school or read their contracts before signing them, and have more than 80% of their salaries deducted in fees for the first six months of work.