Is it neccessary to have a maid? Indon or whatever.

I pick up this subject again after the euphoria recently of an Indon maid was tortured by a lady in whose house she worked. The maid had hot water poured on her, had hot iron put on her back and her breast if she did not perform her job properly and she was really tortured by the employer (the lady employer). Funnily enough the employer's husband pretended not to know anything about the occurrance of the torture. She was saved by the guard of the condo she was in and her plight was brought to the notice of the authorities and was publicised by the press. The lady employer was charged in court, the result of the trial is yet to be known at the time of writing.

This probably was a very severe case of torture which was brought to the notice of the authorities, but there must be less severe work conditions which these Indon maids must have also undergone. Maybe be cases where they not only perform job in the kitchen but also as gardeners or car washers or even as I said earlier as sex servants. One case that I knew of was that the servant was raped by the employers father and she ran off, became mentally unstable.

The euphoria went into the heads of the Malaysian Government Ministers, who tried to get mileage out of the poor servant. They issued all sorts of statements condemming the employer, some of their statememts are even irritating to the ears. They already made judgements even before the employer is sentenced. What they forget is that there are worse cases that they know of which they are so reluctant even to mention in public, for example the torture of the ISA detainees and the Police brutalities which happens quite rampant in Malaysia.

Anyway, my Indon maid has gone back to her home in Lampung in Indoenesia. But she called back saying that she wanted to work more years in Malaysia as a maid. My wife has not made her decision yet as to whether she wants to take the maid back. But if that maid wants to work in Malaysia then she may need to find a new employer.

Personally I would rather live in a house with no maid. I want my privacy and I do not want anything that I have to be shifted about when she cleans the house.

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Some call them 'servants', some 'maid' and some 'child minder' (if the employer has got small children). Some even don't call them 'slaves' but treat them like ones. Personally I prefer to call them 'house helper'. To me they are there just to help to run the household, with your wife still the Manager for the household.

My first contact with the so called 'house helper' was when I was a student in the UK. There was this old lady pensioner who used to come over to the house to clean up the house; she came once a week more or less to tidy up. She was Mrs Cooper, old but was very helpful to keep the flat tidy. She swept and cleaned and mopped and I think we paid her dirt cheap by today's standard, that was about 40 years ago. She is long gone dead by now I can presume.

Then when I came back to Malaysia as a working person, I had one of my relatives to assist in the house I rented in PJ. My wife then did not join me yet. I was not very comfortable with her, she was not trained to look after a house in the town, she was directly from the kampong. I did not sack her, I just politely told her that I was quite comfortable minding my house and so she left.

When my wife joined me I had this girl from a kampong somewhere in Selangor, introduced to us by one of my workers. She could not tolerate living lonelily in the town, and she never looked happy. Out of pity, I think, we paid her one month salary and told her to go back her kampong. After that we did not and need not have a house helper anymore. However when my first daughter was born, in Melaka, we needed someone to help in the house and to look after the baby, when my wife was busy. So we hired a young cousion of mine from my kampong. This time the girl was a bit more educated and she was happy enough staying with us in the town. Unfortunately , she was a nice looking girl. Soon she attracted the attention of one of the boys in the nearby kampong, and before we knew it she had eloped with this boy. And I had to answer to her parents and the local kadi. But as her parents were my relatives, they understood the situation and married her off to the boy.

After that we hired a part time house helper from the nearby kampong, who came in the day time only. She was married and had a child of her own. She was good and she loved my daughter. Anyway when I was transferred out of the town to KL, I had to leave her behind. She is currently employed in one of the Doctors clinic in Melaka.

It was a long time after that when I had again to hire a house helper. This time she was a 'child minder' really as by then I had my second daughter and I was transferred up north of Malaya. This new child minder was good, she could cook and she treated my daughter like her own child. By soon she had to leave, she wanted to get married to a boy in her own kampong.

But luck was with us, as we soon found a replacement who was as good as the first 'child minder' who left. The new girl was also from the kampong, a few miles from my own kampong. She was not very educated, and she was rough. But she was good to the children, my second daughter and a son who was born a year or so later. She soon learned how to cook, to look after the household and in fact without her I would not know how my wife would have coped. We were staying far from my wife's parents, and our only support were the workers of the department where I served. She stayed with us through thick and thin and followed us back to KL when I resigned from my job, looking for greener pastures. When my children were more independent she resigned. I think she knew when to leave. By that time she was already a good cook, my wife taught her everything about Malay cooking that she knew. When she left us, she got a job as a cook in one of the VIP house in KL. Every time this VIP had a party she was made to cook the authentic Malay kampong dishes to serve his guests. I think this VIP died a few years ago and she left. I do not know what happened to her now. We met a couple of times, but she had grown so independent that she would not think of coming to work in our household. And she is not yet married as far as I know.

Years later when I worked in Sarawak, we hired a local Sarawak Malay girl. She was also from a kampong but she knew how to keep a house in town tidy. And she soon learned to cook from my wife, in addition of what she already knew about cooking the local dishes. She stayed with us for a few years, until she decided to return to her kampong. We were sad to let her go, but as she wished it, we did not have any alternative. We then hired a girl from Indonesia but she could not get a work permit as she did not pass the medical examination as required by the Malaysian Government. Another girl from Indonesia came, she got a Work Permit but soon I had to return to KL. So she went back to where she came from.

On coming back to KL our children are now bigger and more independent. So we did not hire any house helper, until recently when my wife's brother wanted to end the employment of his Indonesian house helper. She is good and my wife took over her management and she came to live and work for us. I think the Agency had already trained. At the time of writing this she is with us. I have a strong feeling that when her Work Permit expires she will want to extend that Work Permit, probably she will only be going back to Indonesia for a couple of months just to have an off period.

In all these, we seemed not to pay these people very much. In fact right from day one of my hiring a house helper until now, what we are paying them are 'slave' salary. The amount of work they do (at least what happens in my house) is so much as compared to what we are paying them. I think we are being very stingy. But of course if I have to pay them any higher I will not be able to afford a house helper.

From paper reports I have seen, there are recurring problems between the house helpers and the employers. At worst they are treated like 'slaves', some even kept in chain, not literally but never allowed to go out without the employer. Some are so badly treated that I do not understand what kind of human employer we have in this part of the world. And some are treated like sex slaves. An article in the press reported that these house helpers or child minders will go out with the employer to a good restaurant and are only given scraps of food when the employers family eat. And yet some are given to eat the food but right at the last moment, thus the girl has to probably gobble up the food. What a pity that this has to happen to decent human beings seeking just to work in a so called advanced country like Malaysia and Singapore. Cases have been know when these house helper commit suicide after being badly treated, some burnt with cigarette buds on a slightest mistake and some with hot iron, and worst some left hungry when the employer is away with no food left in the house. Cruel! I wonder what they will do if that happens to their own daughters.

Some problems of hiring these house helpers or child minders are such as accommodation, food, religious practices, the maids freedom to lead their private lives and how much trust one can give them in the house. Many houses nowadays, at least in Malaysia are small houses, with sometimes no spare room for these house helpers. So sometimes they have to sleep in areas exposed to the whole family; this is when some 'father' would creep to these 'servants' and satisfy their ego with them. Not many are made to sleep with the children. Over food, these can create quite a hassle, as our cooking may not suit their taste. Or what we eat are too expensive for them to share, or they may be of different religion so the food in the house cannot be eaten by them due to their religious beliefs. Quite a challenge really. And over trust, these can be quite awkward, they may steal from the employers, not only valuables, jewelry items and money, some have been known to run away with the employer's child which have been entrusted to them to look after. The lesser evil is when these 'house helper' girls bring in men, creeping into the house in the middle of the night. This is rare as most houses are either locked at night by the employer or have auto alarm, but is not impossible to happen. But cases have been known when these 'house helpers' trade themselves over weekends.

All in all, whether we like it or not, we Malaysians have been spoilt by having these 'house helpers' and 'child minders'. We have got now this 'having servants' mentality.. We seemed not to be able to live without them. I think this is terrible, we Malaysians have to be like that. Once the Indonesian Govt. threatened not to allow Indonesian 'maids' to work in Malaysia, and we went wild and made such hue and cry about it. We even tried to recruit servants/house helpers/child minders not only from the other countries in South East Asia but also attempted to recruit 'maids' from Sri Lanka. I think we have been too far spoilt and having to recruit as far as Sri Lanka, we have bowed so low and so undignified just to get to get 'servants'. Why can't we do without them? If one were to look at most advanced countries, 'maids ' are so precious that only the rich can afford them. Again I may ask, do we really need them? Have we been spoilt by easy living?

We have become so weak that we import labour from other countries. I mean 'labour' that is when we are using other people to do work for us. Recently when I went back to my kampong I was so shock to be informed that the graves to bury the dead in my kampong are being dug by Indonesian labour. Have we advanced that far? Are there no more youths in the kampong who can dig graves for their dead, their own dead kins? Before long we will really be buried by the Indonesians. And the Indonesians are tough people. I have seen them working in the Felda oil palm estates (some are legal but most are likely to be illegal. I can be contested for saying so but I will hold on to my belief until proven the contrary). They are very hard working and without them even our oil palm industry may come to a stand still. Ever thought that some Indonesian maids that we employ can even climb coconut trees and pluck coconuts from these tall one stem trees? Well I know that they can, and climbing other fruit trees are just routine matters to them. I have seen them doing that. Even our own children growing up in the town and cities are not even able to climb a rambutan tree, or a small mangosten tree, the easiest trees to climb. I suppose one day when all these Indonesian men and women leave this country and return home we probably can't even put rice in our mouth. So do we sell ourselves and our souls and dignity to these foreign labour? And then these foreign labour need not return to their country of origin? I can imagine now that these foreign labors will become soft in their next generation, soft like us now. So we keep on importing more foreign labour just to work in this country. It will be a virtual event, event without end.

Why cant' we learn to be without house helpers? Why can't we learn to be without foreign labour?
To shout back, e-mail: mylias@tm.net.my