Thursday, May 20, 2010

Agreement on Indonesian Maid

This week Malaysia and Indonesia has come to agreement on the supply of Indonesian maid to Malaysia but we, the consumer and potential hirer of Indonesian maids are all still in the dark over what's the actual agreed term with Indonesia on their maid supplied.

It's said Malaysia has agreed to Indonesia's request for maid to work 6 days a week, and 1 day off. Off-day works will be deem overtime and shall be paid accordingly. This is ridiculous as we've already providing accomodation and meals to maids, and now we still need to give them a day off?

What if these maids mix around outside, which employers would not know their movement during these off days, could be dangerous to employers as well because if they gang up with some outsiders to bring them back home to rob their employers, how could we get the protection from? Moreover these people are fierce and evils, they would do anything to achieve their objective including killing and hurting!

Secondly employer would have to pay a higher levy for foreign workers including maids, which I think is ridiculous as well. Empployers has already have to pay more than RM7,000 to RM8,000 for maids, and there is no security for the employers if these maids run away, worse is they have to pay a fine of RM250 to RM500 if maids run away.

I find it hard to understand why Malaysia government always bound to pressure from others, and agree on whatever their requests are. Is Malaysia really so dependent on foreigners? Why aren't we give them our term and condition for them to agree? Why we have to bound to their request?

The only reason I can think off is that Malaysia has nothing to bargain with others, and they can only agree to what their requests are. Each year Malaysia "imported" hundreds of thousands of foreign workers in, yet we are "exporting" professionals out to other countries. That's the reason behind all these. We have nothing left!

The last stumbling block for Indonesian government is the basic pay for maids. They requested a RM800 basic pay for the maids supplied and I wonder how many of them qualify for such salary scheme? A lot of professionals get only slightly higher than the figure asking for. If our government agree to it, I think it would be better classify Malaysian as tenaga buruk because their treatment is much worse than low class workers from our neighbour.

For me, I think the reasonable basic pay for Indonesian maid is around RM500-RM600 because we have to take into account that accomodation and meals are included in their contract. Also there should be a scheme to protect employers from losing out when maids run away. There are too many of such cases and if government asking Indonesia counterpart to compensate all loses if maids run away during contract period, that would be more reasonable as our BABI NEGARA government should protect their own people than foreigners.

2 comments:

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Fina Thorpe-Willett said...

just passed to this blog and feel silly on this post. definitely malaysia need foreign people for their domestic works. if you disagree with the terms and conditions, why not employ your fellow malaysian as maid instead, or hire no one and do your house chores yourself. better rather than blaming the system.
and when you think malaysia got nothing left, please think again. your country need so much manpower to build your country. those foreigners who come here to work-both blue and white collar level, despite their origin, are the people who help your country to be as it is today. if you count the numbers of Indonesian (include the professional) who works in malaysia only compare to malaysian works overseas regardless the location, the first group outnumbered the second big time. so, be wise please. well at least your government said to put their people in mind... trust them then.