ROBERT Thio (South China Morning Post, December 3), notes, with regard to the ''no maids in lift'' discussion, ''I have observed that many Filipino maids speak loudly among themselves in the lifts of buildings and on public buses . . . this is a nuisance and generates resentment among other people.'' Really! Loud talking a nuisance in Hong Kong? I have observed that on weekday afternoons, the red mini-buses on Caine Road are filled with Chinese schoolchildren on their way home, all talking very loudly, sometimes so that the driver has difficulty hearing requests for stops.
Are they a nuisance? Do we therefore ban schoolchildren from mini-buses? When I lived in Discovery Bay, I noticed that sometimes on late Saturday night ferries there were groups of people - expat and Chinese - in various states of inebriation, talking, laughing or singing loudly in several languages and even engaging in silly behaviour. A nuisance? Are they to be banned from the Discovery Bay ferry? I suggest that these people are all simply letting off steam, a very human activity.
A quick, animated chat in Tagalog in a lift may be the only such opportunity your helper has between days off.
Is this really such a particular nuisance in noisy Hong Kong? Or does it just make it easier for you to deny that she's a person, too, and a resident of Hong Kong just like any other expat worker? There's plenty of recent historical evidence of what happens when we decide that certain ''others'' who are different from us are somehow less human than we.
Finally, consider your helper, relegated to the service lift. So, therefore, is your child, in her care. If you entrust your precious child to the care of someone you despise, won't he learn to despise himself and you, his parents, as well? RHONDDA MAY Mid-Levels
