In theory, it's a no brainer. You need someone to help do the housework, look after elderly parents or young children and in general make life at home, if not a bed of roses, then at least lessen the number of thorns. So you go get yourself a maid from a neighbouring country or as the S'pore government so cutely labels such a person -- a foreign domestic worker or FDW for short.
In practice, the administrative details of such a hiring while not needing an Einstein to untangle are not for the quick-quick oriented. As a result, an employment agent (EA) industry has blossomed to guide blur prospective employers thru the maze. A whole supply chain to support the minutiae requirements related to the luxury of having an FDW in your home has also evolved, for which you have to pay and pay.
There are some 180K such FDWs on our fair island who at roughly S$300 per FDW cost Singapore users approximately $54 million a month.But in reality, the total expenditure/cost/value (depending where in the value chain you are) is much more. There's the FDW levy to the Government. There's the various EA fees; medical check up fees; runner fees to pick up FDW from the airport and send her there; the air ticket home etc
But I digress...what I want to write about is that having a FDW in your home needn't be like having Snow White's seven dwarfs, where all the domestic chores are done in a jiffy with no after or side effects to deal with.
Quite the contrary. An FDW in the home could be the start of new problems to add to those you already have and the short term delight of having another human being pick up after you could soon be replaced with the long term trauma of having to get over the ton of trouble your FDW has dumped on your head.
Yes, I'm one sad, sore and abused employer who suffered a most peculiar experience at the hands of an FDW. But before I go on, I must say I thank my lucky stars that the FDW in my case didn't land me in jail, cause me to go through the ordeal of a police investigation or worse, left me dead-- the first two situations have happened to people I know and in the extreme case of being murdered, I read that in the newspapers.
Let me start with how my family came to employ the FDW who rewarded us with such a horribly weird and unforgettable experience. We had waited for two months for her but she stayed all of just three days, leaving our home in such high drama that initially it seemed like a bad nightmare from which there was no waking up.
The saga had its roots in my mother's accident when she took a terrible tumble from a 4-foot stool in the middle of the night, breaking her eye socket, sinus and right forearm. On her return home from hospital, her FDW friends visited her and discussed her need to employ a maid to help look after her. The FDWs identified Zeema (working for one Mr Chan who lives with his family in one of the apartments on the lower floors) as a good candidate to help my mother, because the Chan family was moving to KL and Zeema didn't want to go with them.
The reason for the FDWs' enthusiasm (more apparent than real as we would discover by and by) to help my mother was because she's supposed to be the favourite among the FDWs working in our condominium. She mixes well with them, attending their parties and other celebrations although we ourselves don’t have a FDW. (In retrospect, it could well be that my mother was too open-handed and generous, contributing $20 to $50 to the festivities each time, so that our family got a reputation for being an easy touch).
On Oct 1 (four days after my mother's acident), which was Zeema's monthly day-off, she came for an interview with my mother, me and other members of our family. She was accompanied by two other FDWs whom my mother knows very well. We discussed terms and it was agreed that she would start work with us on Dec 1 once she finished her current contract on 30/11/06. We were willing to wait for her because she came highly recommended by her Filipino compatriots as well as by the woman who runs the mini-mart in our block.
With the benefit of hingdsight, I've to confess that I felt a slight uneasiness at the interview because despite her apparent nervousness (which my sister gathered from the way Zeema kept wringing her hands), she asked, almost demanded, whether she could own a mobile phone. I asked whether she was allowed to do so by her current employer. No, she replied. I prevaricated and promised to review her request after she's been with us for six months. She didn't press the issue, as I told her she was welcome to use the home phone when she had an emergency and she could always use the public phone downstairs when she wanted to contact her friends.
Another cause for my uneasiness was the way she bad-mouthed her current employer. She said she wasn't provided with any fresh food, being fed only on canned stuff throughout her two years in Singapore. On top of that, she was wokened up often at 1, 2 or even 3am to open the front door for the them, even though they had the key and she had to be up and at work at 5am. As a result, she claimed to suffer the occasional headache and giddy spells.
I didn't think it right for her to be so vicious about her employers but then excused her mentally -- she was probably speaking the truth, even tho she might have added some salt and vinegar. Also, she was perhaps trying to show her keeness to join us. Whatever the reason, I didn't discourage her from carrying tales about them. about which I was to hear more on another day when she told me Mrs Chan had stopped speaking to her once she made clear she didn't want to renew her contract.
"So how?"
"She gives me instructions thru her children or Mr Chan."
My heart went out to her and wondered how she was going to survive such "cold store" treatment for the remainder of her six or seven weeks with them. Again, in retrospect, I needn't have worried, seeing how hard and altogether looking out for herself she really is.
