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Singapore.
Eight Indonesian maids have fallen to their deaths from high-rise apartments in
Singapore this year, and the Indonesia Embassy said Tuesday it is pushing for a
ban on cleaning outside windows.
Indonesia,
which supplies about half of Singapore’s 200,000 maids, has asked employment
agencies to include a clause in work contracts that prohibits maids from
cleaning the outside of windows or hanging laundry from high-rise apartments,
Indonesian Embassy Counsellor Sukmo Yuwono told the Associated Press.
Singapore’s
Manpower Ministry is working with Indonesian officials to identify and possibly
blacklist agencies and employers who don’t ensure maid safety, Yuwono said.
“Our
position is ban it,” Yuwono said. “We warn against employers giving dangerous
jobs like cleaning windows to their maids. It’s upsetting. These are human
beings dying for nothing.”
Singapore
is under pressure to improve the working conditions of foreign maids, who live
full-time in one in five households in the city-state of 5.2 million people. In
March, the government pledged to mandate that maids must be allowed at least
one day off a week starting next year.
Last week,
a court fined an employer S$5,000 ($4,000) and barred her from hiring domestic
workers in the future after a maid fell and died from her fifth-floor apartment
last year while cleaning windows standing on a stool.
Eight
maids, all Indonesian, have died after falling out of windows while working
this year, five of whom were cleaning windows, Singapore’s Manpower Ministry
said. Four maids fell to their deaths in 2011.
Local media
have published photos of maids squatting on windowsills, crawling on ledges or
reaching dangerously off-balance to clean the outside of windows in high-rise
apartment buildings.
In March, a
passer-by snapped a picture of a 26-year-old Indonesian maid who had slipped
while cleaning and was dangling from a window ledge eight stories up. Another
maid tried to pull her up but after five minutes lost her grip and the woman
fell to her death.
“These deaths
are very sad,” Halimah Yacob, Singapore Minister of State for Community
Development, Youth and Sports, told the Straits Times. “Employers must
constantly drum the message into their maids about being careful when cleaning
windows. Once they do that, we will be able to save a lot of lives.”
Most of the
Indonesian maids in Singapore come from small villages, which may lead some to
miscalculate the risk of working on high-rise exteriors.
“When you
are used to a very simple life in the village, (there’s) no such thing as a
high-rise building,” said Mareyeami, an Indonesian who has worked as a maid in
Singapore for six years. “Maybe they don’t know how to clean the windows safely
so they will just try their best. In our country, we don’t think about our safety,
life, all that. We just get the job done.”
Indonesia
is working with Singapore officials and agencies to improve maid training and
raise awareness among employers about maid safety, Yuwono said. The embassy has
helped at least one maid return to Indonesia after her employer insisted she
climb out on a ledge to clean windows, he said.
“She was so
scared,” Yuwono said. “But at least she is alive. I have to call the families
of the maids who die. It’s very hard.”
Hong Kong,
another popular destination for Indonesian maids, sees far fewer accidental
maid deaths because most apartment buildings outsource window cleaning to
professionals while 80 percent of Singaporeans live in public housing blocks
that don’t provide that service, Yuwono said.
Many Singaporeans
who hire maids would likely resist a ban on chores such as cleaning windows or
hanging laundry, said Theresa Low, a homemaker who has employed Indonesian
maids for 10 years.
“Singaporeans
want to get their money’s worth,” Low said. “They really do work the maids very
hard. Singaporeans don’t value them, don’t treasure them as much as they
should. It’s a tragic thing. That’s somebody’s daughter.”
Maids from
Indonesia are often eager to please the employer, are not accustomed to
challenging elders and may not speak up when a task is dangerous, Low said.
“Sometimes
they know something is dangerous, but they do it because they want to work
hard,” said Kartinah Yawikarta, a maid from Indonesia who has worked in
Singapore for nine years. “We come here for money. But I always tell the other
maids, it’s better to go home with no money than to die.”
Associated Press
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