Foreign maids in Singapore work up to 17 hours a day and only half get one day off a month, but the domestic workers say physical abuse is not rampant, a survey showed on yesterday.
While one in six of 284 maids queried by The Sunday Times said their treatment could be better, 82 percent said they are happy here.
Most of the 140,000 maids come from Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. Others are from Myanmar and India.
Abuse of maids is a major concern of Singapore's Manpower Ministry, which reported 99 fell to their deaths while washing windows or doing other chores from high-rise apartments between 1999 and last June.
The courts are issuing harsh penalties on employers who beat or physically harm maids in other ways.
Those interviewed averaged 26 in age and earned an average of S$261 (US$153) a month.
Most are up by 6am and finish between 9pm and 11pm. Seven in 10 are allowed to take breaks during the day.
Only half get days off, and usually only once a month.
Fifty percent said they have their own bedrooms and eat three meals a day, usually the same food as their employers.
Three in 10 have been shouted at and one in 100 said they have been physically abused.
Verbal and emotional abuse is likely to persist, said Anthony Slim, vice president of the Association of Employment Agencies of Singapore.
"Calling maids `stupid' and threatening to send them back and deduct money from their wages will continue, because there's no way to verify it's taken place," the newspaper quoted him saying.
Knowing that maid abusers were in the minority was nothing to celebrate, said Bridget Lew, who chairs the Commission for Migrants and Itinerant People.
"There shouldn't be any abuse in the first place," she added.
‘EYE FOR AN EYE’: Two of the men were shot by a male relative of the victims, whose families turned down the opportunity to offer them amnesty, the Supreme Court said Four men were yesterday publicly executed in Afghanistan, the Supreme Court said, the highest number of executions to be carried out in one day since the Taliban’s return to power. The executions in three separate provinces brought to 10 the number of men publicly put to death since 2021, according to an Agence France-Presse tally. Public executions were common during the Taliban’s first rule from 1996 to 2001, with most of them carried out publicly in sports stadiums. Two men were shot around six or seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the center
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
The US will help bolster the Philippines’ arsenal and step up joint military exercises, Manila’s defense chief said, as tensions between Washington and China escalate. The longtime US ally is expecting a sustained US$500 million in annual defense funding from Washington through 2029 to boost its military capabilities and deter China’s “aggression” in the region, Philippine Secretary of Defense Gilberto Teodoro said in an interview in Manila on Thursday. “It is a no-brainer for anybody, because of the aggressive behavior of China,” Teodoro said on close military ties with the US under President Donald Trump. “The efforts for deterrence, for joint resilience
RSS