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Foreign caregivers need more legal rights, group says

Full-time foreign caregivers and housekeepers should be given legal protection to guarantee their right to rest days or to resign from their positions, foreign laborer advocates said yesterday.

The Taiwan International Workers' Association made the comments in response to a recent event in Taichung which a Filipina housekeeper was arrested for attacking her employer's family with a knife.

The police questioned the housekeeper with the help of translators from the Manila Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei.

Police said the 32-year-old domestic helper, surnamed Visitacion, told them she lost control after having a vision that her husband and four children had been murdered.

The association's executive director Wu Jing-ru (吳靜如) said that the media had incorrectly portrayed the event as a matter of Visitacion's "mental instability" and "her fear of being unable to renew her work contract." They had failed to address the systemic problems with the country's foreign labor policy that the event raised, she added.

Wu told the Taipei Times in a telephone interview yesterday that Visitacion had informed her employer and friends a month ago of her decision to leave her job because of the excessive workload, but the labor broker insisted she stay until her employer had found a substitute replacement.

Finding a new housekeeper, however, usually takes months, Wu said.

"She wanted to leave but she just couldn't," Wu said.

Wu said there are no regulations to ensure that foreign domestic helpers like Visitacion have regular days off or have the right to resign.

"They spend almost the whole day with their employers' family. They do not have any privacy or free time to relax and let off steam," Wu said.

"If employers do not give them days off, they are not able to seek out their fellow countrymen for emotional support either," she said.

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