|
SINGAPORE: Advocacy groups in Singapore have joined
forces to launch on Thursday a call for foreign maids to get a
regular dayoff.
Singapore in 2006 ruled out
giving domestic helpers mandatory rest days, saying it would be
inconvenient.
In a joint statement, the
advocacy groups said about 170,000 migrant women work as maids in
Singapore but only 50 percent were believed to get a regular dayoff,
according to a 2003 newspaper poll, which they cited.
“What we hope to see in the
course of this campaign is … a shift of mindset, so that more
employers do see giving a regular dayoff as a fair thing to do,”
John Gee, president of migrant workers’ advocacy group Transient
Workers Count Too (TWC2), told Agence France-Presse.
His group is working on the
campaign with two other nongovernment groups, The Humanitarian
Organization for Migration Economics (HOME), which provides a
shelter and other services for needy migrant workers, and UNIFEM
Singapore, the national committee of the United Nations Development
Fund for Women.
“This is a strong coalition,
with the potential to reach out much further than any earlier
campaign,” Gee said Wednesday.
In 2006, the bodies that accredit
maid agencies introduced a standard employment contract, which
provides for rest days but gives maids the option of choosing
compensation instead.
Gee said the contract has made
little difference and that denial of a day off remains “a big
problem.”
As part of their effort, the
groups have launched a website, www.dayoff.sg, which offers
information for maids as well as a section addressing common
concerns which it says employers have about giving their helpers a
rest day.
Among the concerns cited is that
the maid will “mix with bad company, have a boyfriend, slacken in
her work.”
Singapore’s Ministry of
Manpower said the dayoff campaign is in line with its own efforts to
ensure maids get adequate rest.
Most of the city-state’s maids
come from Indonesia, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka.
Domestic helpers in Hong Kong
are, by law, granted one dayoff every week and public holidays. A
recent newspaper survey in Singapore showed that maids prefer Hong
Kong and Taiwan over the city-state, because they can get a dayoff
and receive higher pay.
--AFP
|
