Mixed view on progress in ending abuse of domestic helpers
Government agencies point to improvments but rights groups say root causes of problem remain
A year after the horrific abuse suffered by Erwiana Sulistyaningsih shocked the world, labour activists and the Indonesian and Hong Kong governments were still debating whether enough has been done to ensure the protection of domestic helpers.
Reyna Usman, director general in charge of supervision and placement of workers at the Indonesian labour ministry, stressed that his government remained committed to ensuring better conditions and protection for workers abroad under President Joko Widodo.
"We want the recruitment agencies to take responsibility for their maids not just before they leave their training, but also after," she said. "We have also banned a number of these recalcitrant agencies. We had 575 agencies when we started our new rules and now we have 517."
She also said that there had been a trend of more Indonesians choosing to work in Taiwan instead of Hong Kong. There are 227,000 Indonesian workers in Taiwan, compared to about 170,000 in Hong Kong.
But members of a commission set up by a presidential decree to advise the government on migrant worker issues and violence against women said that maid abuse was a long-running problem.
"The violence that domestic helpers suffered keeps being repeated over and over again," said Sri Nurherwati, head of the recovery subcommission under the National Commission on Violence Against Women.
Yuni Asriyanti, coordinator of the commission's migrant workers taskforce, believes that the root of the problem is the recruitment process.
"The entire training process is handled by the private sector. The role of the private sector is just too big," she said.
The problem is that the government has little oversight over the recruitment process, which involves the private sector.
To solve this, Yuni suggested that potential maids should undergo training in government and not private centres.
Yuni also said that many Indonesian maids were recruited in their villages through "middlemen", instead of recruitment agencies because some villages were too remote. Some middlemen forced the Indonesian women to sleep with them before they referred them to agencies, she said. "Some Indonesians think that if they want to change their life, they need to [make a ] sacrifice. They think it is normal," she said, explaining why many victims did not speak up after suffering sexual assault.
Samsudin Nurseha, director of the Legal Aid Institute, claimed that collusion between agencies and Indonesian officials was the reason for the government's "inaction".
He alleged that some officials took bribes from agencies so that they could send maids abroad without helping them secure relevant official approval.
In Hong Kong, a spokeswoman for the Asian Migrants Coordinating Body, said the abuse against Erwiana had raised public awareness about the plight of domestic helpers in the city - except that the Hong Kong government was still failing to give helpers the most basic forms of protection.
Spokeswoman Eni Lestari said there were no rules governing working hours, where helpers slept or the amount of food employers should provide.
She also said that the Indonesian consulate started offering new Indonesian maids a briefing on their rights in the city after another abuse case in 2012, but briefings were not mandatory.
Rafail Walangitan, an Indonesian consular official in Hong Kong, said they had been organising regular meetings with Labour Department officials and the Immigration Department since Erwiana's case came to light. In the meetings, the official told government officials that some unions wanted to scrap rules which required maids to leave the city two weeks after their contracts were terminated and which forced them to live with their employers.
Critics say the live-in requirement means that maids have nowhere to escape if they are abused and that they are unwilling to quit their jobs as it would be difficult to find a new one when they can stay in the city for only two weeks. The Hong Kong government had yet to soften its stance on the two issues, he said.
The Labour Department insisted that it had stepped up efforts to educate the city's 330,000 maids about their rights since the Erwiana abuse case.
It has been placing advertisements in local newspapers in the maids' native languages. Information kiosks with educational leaflets have also been set up at places where maids gather on their days off.
"It is noted that part of the problem stems from the foreign domestic helpers' ignorance of their own rights," said Queenie Wong Ting-chi, the department's senior administrative officer.
The department has also beefed up inspections of local employment agencies, from 1,013 in 2013 to 1,352 last year, while at the same time blacklisting and prosecuting those which violate the law.
Another spokesman said the department had in the past suggested to consulates that they should remove the requirement that maids need to seek employment through employment agencies. "We will continue to raise the suggestions to the relevant governments," he said.
