Imagine, if you will, that you left your country to earn megabucks – let’s say enough money to buy you several houses or start your own business or both – for a few years. Let’s say that when you get to your host country, your employer takes away your passport, tells you exactly where to go, what to do at which time of the day, what time to wake up and what time to sleep.

Your grasp of the language is far from perfect, and you find the communication barrier gets you into trouble. Sometimes, the cultural difference also gets you into trouble. Let’s say you’re signed up as a girl or boy Friday or an au pair, and you give your employer a chicken leg for lunch. Your employer is hugely insulted because it is considered to be the yuckiest part of the chicken, whereas the chicken breast is the most delicious part. Let’s just say that something like that happened.

I can imagine this is experienced by foreign domestic workers in Malaysia almost every day. Domestic workers, for the unenlightened, are maids. The reason why there has been a switch from calling them “maids” to “domestic workers” is because it is believed that there would be a change in perception if the word “worker” is added to their job description. It is also believed that the term “domestic worker” might cause an impetus to the authorities to give this class of workers some form of labour protection outside from their contract of employment.

Unfortunately, I remain dubious on both counts. Once upon a time, we called them “servants” and we switched that to “maids”, believing that more respect would attach to the name switch. A name switch is not what is needed. It’s an attitude switch.

In 2000, there were reported to be 160,000 of them in the country. A cursory Google search does not yield current numbers of domestic workers in the country. Still, this figure shocks me. It also causes me to wonder what Malaysians did before the “good news” in the mid-80s that we could bring in foreign domestic labour.

I lie. I know what we did before we could bring in foreign domestic labour. We worked a little, nay, a lot, harder. My parents, along with my brother and I, cleaned the house. So did all my cousins, and so did all my uncles and aunts. Occasionally, we would hire these little old ladies who wear large straw hats and who ride on old black bicycles in the hot sun. They would come in maybe three days a week to help with the work. Who took care of the little children? Uncles, aunts , grandparents or other relatives or close family friends.

Now, as soon as a couple gets pregnant, the process to hire a domestic worker begins. A lot of us fortunately have good stories to tell. There is a symbiotic growth, the helper gets the money and perhaps learns other skills and languages, while the young parents are liberated to work or play or whatever they please.

Things have become so easy for us in this regard that children appear to be brought up more by our domestic workers and the television than the parents themselves. What’s worse, the young parents lament, “But we have to work, otherwise we can’t live!”

That is true. The cost of living is increasing. But has anyone thought, if you didn’t have the maid, you don’t have that cost. And also, has anyone ever wondered if foreign labour might actually depress the levels of income in the country? Just a thought, I might be wrong.

Unfortunately, there are horrible stories as well. The media has highlighted occasions when domestic workers have kidnapped their employers’ children or abused their employers’ children or even attacked their employers. Perhaps to pre-empt this kind of violence, Malaysians have taken to causing violence and abuse on their domestic workers. Unfortunately, some of these are said to be God-fearing Christians. I won’t go into the details of these, they are in the press or alternatively, contact Tenaganita, who will be able to discuss in detail the evil caused by Malaysian employers to their foreign workers. I write this with no sarcasm, this issue can fill up books.

The Women’s Aid Organization has listed the following as to why Malaysians abuse their maids:

• Maids take advantage of employers by running away at the first opportunity
• Maids have a lots of boyfriends, sleep around, are diseased
• Maids steal husbands
• The migrant domestic worker’s foreign culture is inferior to Malaysian culture and her influence will corrupt the family

Before I continue, if all the above is true, why get domestic help? There are the little old ladies trundling on their black bicycles whom one can hire. Looking at each reason above, it is clear that there is a schizophrenic attitude towards foreign domestic help. I find it ironic that those who are the first to employ foreign domestic workers are also the first to view them with suspicion. A few co-workers I know cannot live without their foreign home workers but immediately installed CCTVs all over their homes when the help first arrived. There is almost a surreal divide – they desperately feel they need foreign domestic help, yet these kind of Malaysians are the first to criticize or suspect the worst.

I wonder how the deterioration of the economy will affect the lives of the domestic workers. Will they be abused (even more)? Will they be forced to do work outside their scope, like help with their employers’ businesses? Will they find their conditions so deplorable that they run away? What then? Will Malaysia’s social ills be laid at their feet?

When I was young, one of those little old ladies on black bicycles came over to our home to help clean. She didn’t stay too long. We had a bit of difficulty keeping constant help. Yet, we managed to survive. Perhaps what I’m trying to say is that there is always another way. It might not be the easier way, but there is an alternative.

But that would leave us with no other scapegoat but “our own kind”. Would we want to make the change?

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