The Indon Maid Matter

Wowza. My maid was acting up the whole day (you know, one of those days when they cannot do anything right), and I tell you... my blood-went-upstairs when I read in The Star today about the demands made by the Indon government for their workers who are planning to work in Malaysia.

Hey don't get me wrong. I am thankful for the help that I get. But the demands made are RIDICULOUS.

The Indonesian side is saying that the demands are necessary because they must do what they can to protect their citizens' rights. Oh gee. So what about us, the Malaysian employers. What are our rights?

I've had two maids so far (this is our second one) but all my life we've always had maids. Alhamdulillah. When I was small, we had a local maid from Batang Berjuntai in Selangor. She was my nanny and Mom's maid. Her name was (is!) Kak Lela. She was with us for more than 10 years and was a part of our family. She left to marry and start a family and it was sad for all of us to see her go.

Mom hired weekly help after Kak Lela left and we got our first Indon maid when Shazwan was born in 1995 because sister was working then and Mom needed help caring for Shazwan. Since then there's been a succession of Indonesian maids in our home.

We never mistreat our maids. My parents' maid has been with us for 11 years and Sister's maid has been with us for 7 years. My first maid, Nila, wanted to stay but chose to go home because she had a toddler of her own. I hope our current one somehow would work a number of years to come.

But hullo! .... If you think having maids is something of a luxury and can really simplify one's life.. goodness how you are sadly mistaken.

When Sister was looking for maid of her own (about 8 years ago), she went through a few agents and was cheated out of thousands of ringgits when the maids ran off or stole things or were forced to be sent back.

Once (we suspect) we took in a maid who was part of a syndicate because she arrived, waited 3 days to see how our house worked, took some money and walked out of the house in broad daylight when she was supposed to be watering the plants outside. The agent remains MIA to this day.

Once we took in a maid who shrieked and cheered and danced when watching the TV. It freaked my parents and sister's family so much that she was sent back after 2 days of unending woots-woots, whistlings and clappings directed to mister television.

Another time we took in a maid from Kampung Pandan who told our Bibik (my parents' maid) that she can teach Bibik the "ways" to make the men in our house bow to the maids' needs and desires. Of the "jampi"/black magic sort. Shudder! We sent her back to the agent immediately and the agent had the nerve to call us a few days later with scoldings of how the maid claimed that she was not fed and was beaten severely by us. Grrrrr.

Then there are the countless maid-stories of people surrounding us.

My cousin Jiji got conned twice in the past year by two different agents and lost a total of RM8000 before dishing out another RM5000 for a third maid from yet another different agent. So far third time's the charm but imagine the money spent.. and the heartache. Never underestimate the heartache. Sakit hati lah..

A friend of my Mom's voiced out that she could not understand how her new maid could eat so much, on and on and on.. only to discover that the maid arrived from Indon already pregnant (the doctors fibbed about this in their medical report over there), and when told that she would have to be sent back, the maid ran off leaving the family high and dry without help and thousands of ringgits down the drain.

Then there's Mira whose maid ran off too, and she suspects the maid had been abusing her 2 year-old son Emir because of the tell-tale blue-black marks he had on him.

I can go on but then we'd never stop, would we? There're just too many maid-related horror stories.

Now the Indon government wants us to let the maids hold their own passports, and have their own bank accounts into which we'd be depositing their salaries for them to handle on their own. In their own hands. And lets not forget the one day off per week. My family usually lets Bibik go home to Indonesia for 3 months each time (she goes home every 1.5 to 2 years) because Bibik never gets a day off. Already now our Bibik's telling us she has no desire for one day off per week because that would be eating into her own money, and she'd have less opportunity and time to spend back in her homeland.

So what do you think..? Do you think all these demands would really help both parties... or would they make the relationships between employers and employees more vulnerable and irritable?

For me, personally, it's like this. Wallahualam... tapi if it's soo hard, Mister Indon Minister... there's still the rest of the third world countries for us to look at. Maybe having a Sri Lankan or Cambodian maid wouldn't be so bad after all.