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.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS