Alex Tam commented on the desirability of introducing a statutory, as opposed to a voluntary, minimum wage in Hong Kong ('Why low-paid workers must be protected by minimum wage', October 1).
A voluntary minimum wage is an absurd proposition. Decent employers who want to pay their staff fairly already do so. Those who don't are not going to sign up for a voluntary minimum wage and legislation is the only likely catalyst, which would make them pay their employees fairly.
We already have a prescribed minimum wage for some workers, such as domestic helpers from overseas. But that legislation fails to protect all of them. The report, 'Random home visits urged to protect domestic workers' (October 1) pointed out that at least 14 per cent of Indonesian maids working in Hong Kong received less than half the 'protected' minimum wage.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that thousands of maids work in unsuitable homes in Hong Kong, as round-the-clock domestic slaves. In addition to being grossly underpaid, many have no proper accommodation and have to sleep on the family sofa or in a bunk bed in a child's room. In other words, they are abused workers and the supposed minimum wage is ineffective to protect them.
Talk of a minimum wage presupposes some form of regular employment by a firm. But what of the poorest of our poor, such as the elderly street scavengers, who struggle to subsist on a presumably self-employed basis? To whom should they apply for a minimum wage? For those on the fringes of society, such as illegal immigrants, who work in the 'black economy', a statutory minimum wage will not be in their interests.
As Jesus said: 'The poor will always be with us.' But here, in one of the world's richest cities, it is high time those statutory 'protections' already on the statute books were better enforced, as with the numerous cases of abused foreign maids.
