By Mathew Pereira
Sports Editor
matt@sph.com.sg

 

IN TODAY'S papers, a Malaysian court sentenced a former flight attendant to 18 years in jail for scalding her Indonesian maid with hot water and hurting her with an iron, in one of the country's worst cases of domestic worker abuse.

Now, that is what I call serious action. There should be zero tolerance for maid abuse. It is sad to hear that maids in Singapore would always prefer to work for expatriates than for Singaporeans - a real reflection on the state of affairs here.

I cringe at the way some employers speak to their maids and that includes people I know (okay, I didn't want to use the word "friends"). I know them to be respectable, decent people but when they turn to their maids to talk to them, suddenly I see a side of them I have never seen before. They become curt, disrespectful, condescending creatures. But when the conversation with their maid is over, they morphe back into human beings.

Something in them just seems to stop functioning temporarily. I am sure many of you would have noticed it too.

Of course, a common retort to critical comments about Singaporean employers is - you are just not familiar with the mischief of maids.

I know maids are no angels and we would get our fair share of dishonest, cruel maids, etc, when we hire them. They are after all a cross-section of their society. Just like we have crooks among us, there would be too in their society. My point is that even having factored this in, Singaporeans appear to be harsh employers.

What are your views? Anyone wants to make suggestions on how the situation here can be improved other than resorting to still prison sentences like the 18 years' jail the Malaysian woman was given?

Read 18 years jail for maid abuser in today's edition of The Straits Times.