Forum: People becoming inordinately demanding towards maids

Do you spend hours on your knees cleaning the floors with a hand cloth? Do you hand-wash all of your family's soiled clothes, including the children's army uniforms? Do you wash all your toilets every day? Do you sleep in a storeroom that is too small for a regular-sized single bed?

This is the life that many of our foreign domestic workers (FDWs) face daily, just so that many of us can go to work without having to worry about meals, household chores, our children or elderly or sick family members.

In the last few months, I have been trying to match several FDW friends with potential employers, and have found a disturbing trend.

Just because they are paying to have a helper, people insist on the FDW doing unnecessary manual labour, like hand-washing all clothes, despite the availability of modern electrical appliances.

Moreover, there are surprising requests like having to wash the bathrooms and mop the floors daily before six in the morning.

And people seem desperate for help but are unwilling to provide decent accommodation, like a room where the helper will feel safe, have some privacy and can store her own belongings.

Sadly, many people are also unwilling to offer more in terms of salary and those who think they are generous in paying $800 often come up with many additional small jobs to keep their helpers as busy as possible.

What are we as a society becoming when we treat these guests in our homes, who are so essential to the smooth functioning of our society, as invisible and unseen? What has happened to courtesy and graciousness?

Winnie Foo Hui Lin

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