Hong Kong’s COVID-19 containment campaign is taking its greatest toll on the hundreds of thousands of migrants who work as live-in domestics in the territory.
Scores have been evicted or sacked after testing positive for COVID-19, by employers who do not want the virus in their households, local rights groups say.
Some are facing steep fines for breaching Hong Kong’s two-person limit on gatherings — a rule that has upended the long-standing tradition of domestic workers meeting up with friends on their single day off.
On Feb. 19 and 20, foreign domestic workers, known locally as “helpers,” accounted for more than one in every four people fined for breaching the territory’s COVID-19 protocols, even though they account for less than 5 percent of the population.
The fines can be as much as HK$10,000 (US$1,281) — twice the minimum monthly wage for live-in domestic workers.
One 57-year-old Philippine woman said that she was fined HK$5,000 after lowering her mask for “five seconds” to take a telephone call.
“My friend’s employer got out a taxi and the police saw her mask on her chin, but no penalty,” the worker said. “For me, it is discrimination, because we are domestic helpers.”
She asked to remain anonymous because she was afraid to get in trouble with the police.
“Police will act on the basis of any actual circumstances in accordance with the law,” a police spokeswoman said.
Helpers work in about 10 percent of Hong Kong households. Mostly from the Philippines and Indonesia, the 340,000-member workforce is an often-overlooked, but critical part of Hong Kong’s US$345 billion economy, providing live-in child care, and cooking and cleaning services for as little as HK$4,630 per month.
However, they do not enjoy the rights or privileges of other long-time foreign workers in the territory. Unlike professional expatriates, helpers are never eligible for “permanent resident” status.
They depend on their employers not only for shelter and wages, but also for their visas; if they lose their job, they have two weeks to find another before they must leave.
As Hong Kong records more COVID-19 cases, domestic workers are facing not only the looming threat of getting sick, but also severe financial anxiety, said Johannie Tong (唐曉昕), a community relations officer at Mission For Migrant Workers.
“It’s very unfortunate that the [Hong Kong] government hasn’t really commented or given guidelines on how migrant workers should be treated during this COVID crisis,” Tong said. “That’s left to the employers to decide.”
Reports of families being separated by Hong Kong’s strict policies on COVID-19 isolation and hospitalization have made households especially cautious, and at the same time, facilities are overrun, so authorities are telling people with mild infections to quarantine at home.
One 31-year-old helper said her employer refused to let her quarantine at home, adding that she could only return after posting three negative test results.
Without food or warm clothes, she spent a 10°C night camped outside a hospital before being moved to a shelter.
According to Hong Kong law, firing a helper for being sick could lead to prosecution and a fine of up to HK$100,000.
HELP for Domestic Workers executive director Manisha Wijesinghe said that her organization raised more than HK$1.2 million within a week to support COVID-19-positive helpers who had been evicted by employers, as well as to fly workers to their home countries and help others access counseling.
“There is definitely an element of human rights issues, but this is not isolated to COVID-19,” Wijesinghe said. “COVID-19 has really thrust these issues into the spotlight.”
The government has expressed alarm over helpers’ regular Sunday gatherings, when they gather in parks and on sidewalks to spend their days off with friends.
“Ask your helpers to stay home,” Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥) said in a Feb. 18 news conference. “We will not show mercy anymore.”
That extended to a crowdfunding effort that sprung up to assist helpers facing steep fines.
A campaign had raised US$107,000 before government officials said that the effort might be breaking the law.
“You may have good intentions, but we can’t rule out that you are maliciously obstructing our whole anti-epidemic effort,” Hong Kong Secretary for Labor and Welfare Law Chi-kwong (羅致光) told Commercial Radio on Feb. 20.
“You are helping a big group of foreign domestic workers to congregate,” Law added.
For the 57-year-old woman who was fined for lowering her mask, it is the legal requirement to live with employers that made her vulnerable to the harsh COVID-19-related penalties.
“We are in our employer’s house for six days a week,” she said. “Then, as soon as the police can see us chatting with each other, they hand out a fine.”
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