Domestic helper cleaning the window
‘They won't even let me wear shorts’: Maid says some employers want total control
SINGAPORE: As more families rely on domestic helpers to keep their households running, particularly parents juggling multiple jobs or overnight shifts to make ends meet, questions are emerging over how much control employers should have over their helpers' lives. Does hiring someone give an employer ownership over them? And where should the line be drawn?
That question sparked fresh debate online after one helper spoke out about an employer who micromanaged not only her work, but how she behaved and dressed.
She said she was banned from wearing shorts and from speaking to another helper outside the home. She was also barred from using her phone during breaks and claimed she was made to “work work work” nonstop from 6 AM to 8 PM, with only one day off a month.
“Not all employers are ok,” she wrote in a post on the 'Complaint Singapore' Facebook group on Saturday (Oct 3). “Some employers, they want control over their helpers. Why are some employers like that?”
Other helpers flooded the comments with similar accounts of mistreatment by past employers.
One recalled: “I've been with that kind of employer before. Everything you do got issues, only to find out that her daughter not living with them also wearing thin and short shorts almost naked. Don't want me to use lipstick even during off days. So I just put lipstick when I reached MRT toilet, then I wiped my lips with wet tissue before I go back home.”
Another wrote: “Me from 6am up to 12am finish work... no rest! Include also my 5-hour sleep with the kid makes me a zombie because she won't let me sleep; I keep moving in bed and cry! And yet my ma'am never appreciates, never give rest! They only think they paying the helper! 2x off, but most of it she needs me to stay!”
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A third said: “Last time, I was also not allowed to have long hair; every 2-3 months I had to cut my hair up to my ears.”
A fourth added: “Excuse me, 6am-8pm? Also got off day? Lucky enough — while me 5am-10pm, no rest, no off day, can't go out, no phone, sometimes still got disturb at 11pm to cook for another family member. But that's all in the past.”
Troubled by these accounts, some readers urged the helpers to file complaints or report the incidents. “This society is sick; report them all,” one wrote./TISG