Teaching Decency

I am proud to say that despite my resistence to returning to study, I now have an extra qualification. I have a certificate in "Maid Hiring." So, now all that remains for me to do is to meet the financial criterion for hiring a maid.

To my Western readers, the idea of having a maid may sound quaint - something you only do if you live in a Dickensian fantasy. However, in Asia, having a maid is taken for granted in most middle income families. The economic structure in a place like Singapore is such that it's an economic necessity for both parties in a couple to have full time jobs and so the maid is necessary to do things like look after the kids or the old folks, while the economically productive husband and wife go to work.

On paper this arrangement is workable. Places like Singapore and Hong Kong have plenty of Middle Class people who are fully engaged in economically productive activities. They outsource household task to others thereby leaving them more time to focus on areas where they will be most productive. In the mean time, Asian countries like the Phillipines and Indonesia have plenty of workers willing to do household chores for low wages just to keep things going. The "Maids" form an important part of the Asian economic system. The economy of the Phillipines tugs along thanks to the women who work as maids in the wealthier parts of Asia and they even help the economies of their host countries - in Singapore, the telcos are finding that the domestic growth market comes from people like Maids who use temporary cards that need to be topped up on a regular basis.

What works on paper does not always translate into real life. Not every maid finds life to be a bed of roses. To a simple village girl from the Philipines, Thailand or Indonesia, the move to a craped high rise in Singapore or Hong Kong can be exceedingly traumatic. Then there the usual clashes when people from alien cultures collide. But you would imagine that with a bit of compassion and human decency, cultural collisions can be over come - "I pay you to do x,y,z and you do it and all should be well."

Well, unfortunately, it does not work that way. If the test that I took was anything to go by, it seems that decency escapes most Singaporeans when it comes to hiring a domestic worker. Let me not sound naive about maids here. There are plenty of bad eggs amongst them. You hear of stories of maids who abuse the elderly under their care, steal and get up to all sorts of hanky panky when the employers are out. As a potential employer, I expect my maid to be honest and to look after my interest as much as I would look after hers - hence if I had one that stole from me or abused my kids, I'd fire her.

But as in all things, you would expect the superior person aka the employers to behave in a superior manner. Unfortunately, allot of Singaporeans (and others who hire maids) think that being elite gives them the right to ignore the rules of human decency. If this were not the case, one not need to make first time employers go through a course and take a test to tell them things like:

a - Take time to explain things to your maid

b - You MUST provide your maid with a bed

c - Give your maid time to rest.

d - It's not acceptable to physically hurt your maid

Seriously, there's something wrong with society when the government has to make people sit through a course and threaten jail terms if they go off into behaving like shit people. Come on, isn't it common sense that you simply don't beat people? Well obviously not.

I remember writing that one of the ways to tell the real character of a Singaporean is to see the way they treat their maids. I think I continue to stand by that. I really don't know where people get the idea that it's their god given privillege to abuse people for the fun of it. As the more enlightened have realised, it's not how much money or how famous you are the qualifies you as elite but how you treat those who are smaller than you.