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By Stephanie Wong
The ultra-modern HSBC
headquarters in Hong Kong’s downtown is one of the most
distinctive buildings in the city for its futuristic, modular
design.
On Sundays, however, it becomes
noticeable for a different reason—its canopy-like construction
offers ideal shade for hundreds of maids who shelter there on their
weekly day off.
Hong Kong’s transformation on a
Sunday is legendary: the city’s armies of 250,000 foreign domestic
helpers turn streets that usually bustle with shoppers into noisy
picnic sites where they eat precooked meals, swap manicures and
massages and catch up on gossip.
But in a reflection of the
demographic shifts seen in the region in the 10 years since Hong
Kong reverted from British to Chinese rule, the make-up of the
Sunday gatherings—like Hong Kong’s 400,000-strong ethnic
community—has changed.
“We don’t have our own home.
We all live in different parts of Hong Kong so here is the only
place and the only day when we can meet every week,” Cherrie
Manila, a 39-year-old Filipino maid, told Agence France-Presse.
“I’m quite happy to hang out
with my friends on the streets,” said Manila, sitting on a piece
of newspaper laid out for her and her friends.
Hong Kong’s 115,000 Filipinos
make up the city’s single largest immigrant community and the
majority, like Manila, are working here as maids.
Still, the number of Filipinos
has fallen by more than 5,000 since 1996, because of tighter visa
regulations and better prospects further afield, said Eni Lestari
from Hong Kong-based NGO Asian Migrants Coordinating Body.
“The number of Filipinos is
falling because they are moving to Western and European countries
for work,” she said.
Tighter immigration regulations
have driven many to take advantage of lower bars in countries such
as Canada and the European Union, Lestari added.
Indonesians, however, are more
than filling the gap.
Hit by natural disasters,
economic crisis and a shortage of jobs, Jakarta has tried to cut
unemployment by encouraging its people to seek work overseas, said
Lestari.
As a result, the Indonesian
population here has shot up fivefold since 1996 to 110,576.
One of them is Anna Yulianda, a
28-year-old domestic helper, who said she sends 80 percent of her
4,500 Hong Kong dollar (US$577) monthly salary home to support her
family and for her two young sisters’ university education.
She hopes eventually to get
married and have a big family. Just not right now. “I still need
to make more money first. Only money can bring happiness, right?”
But tight visa restrictions, an
increasingly competitive labor market and precious little in the way
of a social safety net mean immigrants still occupy the lower rungs
of society here.
Such hardships are brutally
apparent in the Nepalese community, which once enjoyed the patronage
of the British army’s Gurkha brigade, now vastly reduced in size
and based in Britain.
Ex-Gurkha Tamang Hembahadur
is among 16,000 Nepalese who have been left to fend for themselves
and their children.
Although many of their children
have been trained as engineers, doctors and lawyers, often they are
forced by the language barrier to take low-paid and low-skilled jobs
in bars and restaurants, he said.
“We are treated like outsiders
and a different class,” said Hembahadur, who came here 22 years
ago aged 23 and is now a security company supervisor.
“We had been devoted to the
Hong Kong people, but after the handover, the government never
mentions what the Gurkhas did, it never says that the Gurkhas are
brave. They forgot us,” the father of three said.
Perhaps the biggest demographic
change of all since the handover, however, has been in the British
community.
Once the largest expatriate
legion in Hong Kong, their numbers have dropped to 25,000, just a
seventh of the total recorded on the census one year before the
handover.
Simon Kay is typical of those who
arrived here before the handover, taking advantage of visa
regulations that allowed Britons easy entry and work
permits—rights that have since been scrapped.
“I was running away from a
family situation—my best mate from school was here. I just wanted
to take a break from home,” said Kay, a 39-year-old magazine
design manager from Edinburgh.
“It was easy to find jobs here.
You could just walk into any pub and get a job.
“But job opportunities got less
and less over the years because you are now expected to speak
Cantonese for many positions. There are not as many jobs for the
expats here now.”
--AFP
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