Maid says she scrubbed & cleaned until her fingerprints disappeared; wasn’t able to unlock her phone with fingerprint

A foreign domestic helper took to social media after she discovered that she scrubbed and cleaned so much her fingerprints did not register on her phone.

In a post to popular Facebook group FDW in Singapore (working conditions forum), a helper wrote that she had to do spring cleaning in anticipation of Chinese New Year (Jan 31, 2023). The cleaning she had to do was because she planned to go on leave back to her home in December.

In her post, the helper wrote that she had to “scrub a lot today until my finger prints almost disappear”.

She also made reference to most smartphones’ feature of being able to unlock the mobile with one’s fingerprint. To that, she wrote: “not working and having hard time earlier to UNLock my phone”. She had difficulty unlocking her phone because the skin on her fingertips had come off, to the point where her phone was not able to recognise her fingerprint.

Responding to her post, other helpers seemed resigned to this fate. They just advised her to use gloves and to apply lotion or petroleum jelly to her hands at night. They also said that this was something she could overlook since she was earning money.