SINGAPORE: After working for her employer for seven years, a maid took to social media, upset by problems she faced in her eighth year.
In an anonymous post to a Facebook support group for foreign domestic workers, the helper wrote that she was initially willing to sign a fifth two-year contract, but then her problems started. Once, after she came home late on her day off, she had an argument with her employer, who “calculated all her help and what she gave and even took back some things what (sic) her mother (had) given to me”.
The maid added that she told her employer not to renew her work permit as she did not “want to work for you anymore”. Her employer angrily called her heartless, ungrateful and selfish. The woman considered the maid’s refusal to work for her an act of betrayal.
But the helper said in her post that she even accompanied her employer’s elderly parents to church on her day off because one had dementia and the other would get panic attacks.
She said that her employer “even compared me to her friends helper that don’t have day off,the salary is lower than mine the worst is she even told me DOMESTIC HELPER IS NOT INTITLE (sic) FOR PUBLIC HOLIDAY as not stated in MOM”.
Shocked, the maid said that all along they had a mutual understanding that she would take public holidays off.
For the fifth contract, her employer wanted to draft her own version and have the helper sign it, but the latter refused to do so without help from her agency. The maid said her employer then tore up the contract as she did not want to spend money paying for the agency.
“My question is why some employer are just out their anger they just anyhow say what in their mind to their helper if the helper will reason the employer will furiously anger to their Helper?” the maid asked in her post.
Most of those who commented on the post said that both the helper and her employer were at fault. They agreed that her employer should not have spoken to the helper like that but said that the maid, too, took her work lightly by coming home late. Here’s what they said:
Earlier this year, an employer took to social media asking how she could make sure her maid handled her child properly.
In an anonymous post to a Facebook group for domestic helpers, the employer asked: “Hi for those with babies, how do you manage your FDW such that your baby is always in safe hands?”
“I dont dare to scold or even say too much cause fdw black face i scared already. Which means very hard to manage and i end up doing a lot of work myself. Really very scared the fdw do anything to my baby… put dirty water into baby bottle and never wash properly baby will food poisoning and maybe die…” the woman wrote. She added that her husband was not much help and she was already stressed by the pregnancy.
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