Hong Kong - Indonesian maids working in Hong Kong are
physically and psychologically abused and paid illegally low wages,
organizers of a campaign to punish rogue employers said Friday.
Many of the city's 135,000 Indonesian maids are beaten by their
employers and paid a fraction of the government-set minimum wage of
460 US dollars a month, two labour groups said.
The Indonesian Migrant Workers Union and the Coalition of
Indonesian Migrant Workers Organization want the Hong Kong and
Indonesian governments to draw up a blacklist of employers and
employment agencies.
Launching their campaign, they said one employee was regularly
kicked and slapped by her employer who stabbed her with chopsticks on
one occasion and cut her pay to 38 US dollars a month.
Many other Indonesian women are lured to jobs in Hong Kong by
agencies and then paid wages of less than 300 US dollars a month
despite signing contracts guaranteeing them the minimum wage.
Complaints by abused and underpaid maids rarely succeed, however,
as sacked maids are forced by immigration laws to leave Hong Kong
within two weeks of losing their jobs, the groups said.
The number of Indonesian maids in Hong Kong has boomed in recent
years and was expected to soon surpass the number of Filipino maids
in the wealthy city of 7 million.
Surveys suggested Hong Kong employers prefer Indonesian maids to
Filipinos because they speak better Cantonese and are prepared to
work for less than the minimum wage.
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