Maid upset that her employer tells her to ‘use your brain’ and calls her stupid; other helpers say this is the norm in SG

SINGAPORE: A foreign domestic helper took to social media after she felt that her employer wanted to transfer her for insignificant reasons.

In her anonymous post to a support group on Facebook, the maid asked other netizens for their opinion on whether her employer’s reason for transferring her was valid. She said her employer would call her names “like STUPID and USE YOUR BRAIN”. She would be scolded for simple reasons “like sometimes forgot minor things which is not on purpose”, she wrote.

In the comments section, the maid said that it was her employer’s mother who had been calling her names, not her employer or their child.

Here’s what others in the group said:

Last year, in yet another case of a foreign domestic worker stuck in a rather abusive and unpleasant working environment, the helper in question tried to ask for a transfer but was denied so by her employers unless she compensated them for the remaining days of her contract.

In a Facebook post to a group for helpers called FDW in Singapore (working conditions forum), the helper wrote on March 5 that she wanted the opinions of other employers and helpers in the group. She shared that she had worked with her employer for almost four years and would finish her second contract in three months.

She explained that for the past three years, there had been a lot of conflict between herself and her employer’s family members, especially their children. Whenever she would tell them nicely to eat faster, finish their homework or stop watching television, they would rudely tell her that it was none of her business.

The helper, who remained anonymous in her post, wrote that they would tell her that she was lousy, stupid, and damned. Frustrated and upset, she would complain to her employer, the kids’ mother, who would tell her not to take their words too seriously and brush off the situation.

Maid wants transfer after employer’s children called her ‘stupid & damned helper’ but family says she either finishes contract or compensates them