It is good to see the plight of foreign domestic helpers being discussed in Letters and elsewhere in the South China Morning Post. But nobody seems to want to address the most glaringly obvious question: Why does a region with a population of just 7 million require nearly 300,000 domestic helpers?
I can understand that the old and infirm may need some kind of assistance, but why are so many able-bodied people in Hong Kong incapable of performing simple tasks like shopping, cooking and using a washing machine?
Worse, why are so many people unable or simply unwilling to bring up their own children? Some might argue that having a domestic helper enables both parents to work full time, repeating Hong Kong's favourite saying, 'It's good for the economy'. Well it might be good for the economy, but it is hardly good for the well-being of their children.
Why do people insist on having children if they do not want to look after them? It seems that as soon as a child is born, it is dumped with the helper (or in the case of some westerners, nanny) and forgotten about by the parents. This has a terrible effect on the child who, after being passed from helper to helper and seldom spending time with his mother or father, grows up with no concept of what a parent is.
People in Hong Kong seem to be embracing laziness because it is so easy to exploit a helper from less- developed countries. An entire generation of children is being neglected by their parents, merely because it is cheaper to pay an Indonesian or a Filipino slave wages, than to actually care for their own child.
JACK MUIR, Lamma
Don't overcharge maids
