Hong Kong's domestic helpers 'should be paid HK$4,500 a month'
Helpers push for wage rise amid government review, saying city is not the draw it once was because pay hasn't kept pace with living costs
Domestic helpers in the city are treated as "cheap labour" and should get a wage increase or pay parity with Hongkongers on the minimum wage, the workers' representatives say.
Eman Villanueva and Eni Lestari, of the Asia Migrants' Coordinating Body, said the monthly minimum wage for the more than 300,000 domestic helpers in the city should go up to HK$4,500, from the current HK$4,010 - or the HK$30 hourly minimum wage for Hongkongers should cover helpers.
"If you consider the inflation over these years, people will realise that the value of our wage has gone down so much," Villanueva said after a recent meeting with the Labour Department, which is reviewing helpers' wages. A recommendation is expected by the end of this month.
Villanueva was paid HK$3,200 a month as a helper when he came to Hong Kong from the Philippines 23 years ago. In more than two decades the monthly minimum wage for helpers has gone up to HK$4,010, and was only HK$3,920 until last year.
When Lestari came to the city from Indonesia in 1999 she was paid only HK$2,000 a month, about HK$1,000 less than the amount she was supposed to get by law at the time.