'Modern Slavery'

Ref: http://www.merdekareview.com/news/n/10004.html
Recently there are some news about Indonesia government plan to cut off the supply of Indon maid to Malaysia due to several cases of maid abuse in Malaysia.
Our Minister of HR & Labor had proposed that all indon maid shall be given one day off every week to offload their stress. However, 95% of the family who had a Indon maid at home opposed such an idea. For me, I supported it even though I understand that most families concern that if the maid went out and get to know some illegal workers, they might end up coming home pregnant or worse, open the door for others to come into the house and rob the whole family.

My family used to have a Indon maid at home, she had been with us for 4 years, she went home once or twice for a 1-month holiday during the past 4 years and we sponsored the tickets for her. A friend used to tease me that I treated my maid 'too good'. The reason is because there is one day he came to my house around 8pm and he saw our maid is watching TV together with us. Well, I told him directly, she had work the whole day and I think she deserve some rest! Our maid usually went to bed around 9-930pm, sometimes when nobody is around the living room, I just hand her the TV remote, tell her to switch to whatever channel she like to watch. And there is one time I saw her reading books with the little table light, I ask her to switch on the lights and don't save the electricity for me, because it might damage your eyes if you read in insufficient lights condition. On Sunday, my maid only do some light duty work, despite she broke some of our stuff, we never make her pay for it, of course, we will scold her for her carelessness, so that she won't repeat the same mistake or try to be more careful next time. We never go beyond that, like some cruel boss who beats their maid.

On the other hand, my friend's maid is not so lucky working for his family. What I see is exploitation! One day when I visited his home, I saw the maid was massaging his mom at 11:30pm! So I ask him what time his maid wake up. He told me 5am! I was like, WTF?! Aren't she getting enough sleep working for your family all they long!? To add some salt on the wound, his family made the maid paid for the lost because one day her maid went to toilet due to stomach ache, she forgot to shut off the gas and the fire burn the pan. I think they make her pay for her half month's salary because the fire has burned a hole on the pan just to penalize her. I know this may end up a big disaster if the fire burn down the house. But couldn't be that she is so forgetful because she got lack of sleep and rest? I really pity her maid, her face looks so unhappy whenever I saw her.

Yesterday when we were having dinner, my mom told me that my cousin's mother in law also treated her maid badly, she fed her maid with leftover/overnight food; so does the neighbor behind my house that always scolded her maid stupid, more like a mental torture to me. Let say same thing to us, if we go to work every morning and our boss treated us such a way without any respect, you will feel very angry or sad right?

From time to time we heard maid got abused, or maid gone crazy, like recently a maid slaughtered her boss by cutting off her stomach in Hong Kong. I think these kind of things happened because the maid just mentally explode like a volcano after they piled up all their stress and anger from day to day until they can't take it anymore.

The above examples that I saw, I can see that some people think that they want to make full use of the peanuts which they have paid! Come on, if you are just paying RM500-600 per month and you want to fully utilize a person like a machine? Or treat them like a dog? To me, it is no difference than enslaving others? Well, or course, it is still better than the slavery of the old days because in modern days you won't whip someone. So I can only say that this is 'modern slavery'. It is simply not right to make a person work 24/7 without any off days, it is simply ;inhumane' to do so, that is why I support the idea having one single off day on everyweek. I will also suggest that the agency shall visit the maid from time to time just to find out how's things going on. Opening agency is a good business as I know a lot of them are political connected, if they want to collect high commission, then they should at least do their work!

Before my maid went back to her country, she shared with us when she first started to work here, she feel very pressure, because she was only 19 and far away from home, she told us that she feel like going crazy. But luckily we didn't treat her badly so after some time, she managed to adjust herself and she is ok and able to cope with it. What I think is, we need to treat people with respect and with a sincere heart, when we do so, in return, we will get the same treatment back from others. Of course, there are some exceptions, but still, I believe most of the time you get treated by how you treat others.