On 5th July 2007, Susilawati Kusnata, climbed out of the 5th storey Pasir Ris flat in which she was working as a domestic helper to escape the four months of abuse she was going through. She made it down safely to a stairway and took the lift down. A few days back, her employer’s wife and mother were charged for abusing her.
In the last decade, Singapore papers have been littered with stories of maid abuse. Who can forget 47-year-old tour guide, Ng Hua Chye, and the nightmare he created for his 19-year-old maid, whom he kicked, hit and left to die?
Is there no ending to such cruelty?
Before you go ahead and stamp Singaporeans as hard-hearted beasts, we’ve had our fair share of ‘maid attacks’ as well. You can’t possibly forget Sundarti Supriyanto who was charged with the murder of her 34-year-old employer, Madam Angie Ng Wee Peng, and her employer’s young daughter, 3-year-old Poh Shiqi. But then a nagging thought remains with this case – each step of the way, Supriyanto claimed that her employer had abused her first which started the insane outburst of events that followed.
In each and every case of maid abuse or employer abuse, we tend to overlook one thing – the maid agency. The link between the employer and the domestic help. If maids lash out at their employers, should the maid agency be charged? Dave Kim certainly thinks so. “They’re in charge of recruiting the helpers so they should share part of the blame if the maid flubs” says the 32-year-old software engineer.
So who shares the blame if the employer abuses the maid?
TheAsianparent.com hopped on down to one maid agency to hear their standing on such abuse cases. We met Mr. Peter, who is in charge of Javamaids, which is located at 182 Yio Chu Kang Road.
Javamaids
This 3-year-old company has two other branches at Hougang Green Shopping Mall and Bukit Timah Shopping Centre. Javamaids also has its very own Recruiting and Training Centre in Indonesia to ensure that the selected domestic helpers will be able to adapt to a society such as Singapore’s.
The recruited maids are trained in infant care and elderly care with the use of mannequins. Domestic helpers from other countries are trained in their own individual countries before coming here. Javamaids employs maids with an age range of 23-45.
An interesting titbit about Javamaids is that, not only does it supply maids to other agencies but also provides professional counselling and coaching to all maids regardless of whether the maid is from its own agency. Hassles such as Work Permit application, security bond, insurance, travel arrangement, medical screening, etc, are all taken care of by the agency.
Whose side?
We posted the question of which side maid agencies should take when dealing with complaints from either side (the employer’s or the helper’s). “We don’t either side. We have to listen to both sides and then we set out to counsel both parties. To combat such unexpected problems, our agency does a review within 6 months of the employment of each individual maid. Maids are becoming smarter now. They’re more aware of their rights, etc. So a level of fairness is definitely maintained among both parties,” answers Mr Peter, diplomatically.
Perhaps if more agencies adopted this fair approach, maids would not fear bringing light to any slight abuse or allow it to escalate further.
To find out about JavaMaids Agency visit their website or call them at 65 6284 2900.
