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Mary Ann Benitez

Maids who come to work in Hong Kong are being made to pay up to six times their monthly salaries to recruitment agencies and money lenders who collude to fleece them, a help group claims.

Helpers for Domestic Helpers, which provides legal advice for maids, says money-lending firms make some of its less-educated clients sign documents without explaining the fine print.

The Mission for Filipino Migrant Workers says excessive recruitment fees have become more serious in the past two years because of collusion between agencies and financial institutions that grant loans to pay off the recruiters.

When maids arrive, the recruitment firms take them directly to money lenders and get them to sign high-interest agreements that enable the recruitment firms to be paid off immediately.

In the case of one Indonesian helper, whose details cannot be released as she is seeking legal redress, the agency charged her $22,000, six times her monthly salary and 60 times the legal limit.

Her agency in Indonesia instructed her to pay the fees in installments to its sister agency in Hong Kong, which then took her to a money lender.

She was made to sign a loan agreement at an annual interest rate of 60.27 per cent, meaning she would have had to hand over a total of $35,291 to the money lender if the loan was repaid over a year.

Another Indonesian said she was made to sign a loan agreement in Hong Kong to pay off recruitment fees of about $26,000 that the Indonesian employment agency charged her.

'My employer just paid my entire salary directly to the money lender and I had no money at all for seven months,' she said. 'I could not even call my family.'

In a letter to be sent to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Employment Agents Authority, Helpers for Domestic Helpers said: 'It is distressing to see financial institutions operating in Hong Kong acting in tandem with these employment agencies and aiding them to circumvent the law.

'They have participated in a scam by granting a loan while knowing the illegal nature of the purpose of such a loan without even assessing the borrower, as is customary.'

A spokeswoman for the Hong Kong Monetary Authority said: 'The HKMA takes seriously any non-compliance with our code of banking practice.

'If any of our authorised institutions are found to disregard the provisions of the code, the HKMA will consider taking appropriate follow-up action.'

According to the HKMA code, if an institution charges a higher interest rate than that prescribed by the Money Lenders Ordinance, it should be able to justify why such a high interest rate is 'not unreasonable or unfair'.

A spokesman from the Indonesian Consulate-General, Sitorus Sahat, said the consulate had asked Jakarta to review the recruitment fees and take steps to stop overcharging.

A proposal was before the Indonesian government to allow Indonesian helpers to be directly hired, instead of going through agencies, from their second contract, he added.

The Mission for Filipino Migrant Workers has gathered at least 300 cases of overcharging for a planned class-action against recruiters in Hong Kong and the Philippines. The maids have been charged between 60,000 pesos (HK$9,680) and 115,000 pesos (HK$18,455).

A spokesman for the Labour Department said the government took a 'serious view' of overcharging. Employment agency operators are not allowed to charge any payment except a commission of not more than 10 per cent of a worker's first month's salary. The maximum penalty for overcharging a job-seeker is $50,000.



Agents and lenders fleecing maids