Plans afoot to push for e-payments for all maids in Singapore
Labour representatives hope the move will tackle salary disputes
By Neo Chai Chin
With salary disputes forming a significant proportion of cases it saw last year, the labour movement’s Centre for Domestic Employees (CDE) in Singapore will push for electronic payments for all foreign domestic workers, according to centre chairman Yeo Guat Kwang.
“Today, it’s still not standardised,” Mr Yeo said at an event at the Singapore Flyer to mark the CDE’s first anniversary and to thank 50 of its volunteers.
The centre does not want merely to fight fires by tackling problems after they arise, he added. To prevent salary and employment-related disputes, it wants to go upstream by, for example, promoting better communication between employers and employees.
It has launched a handbook for bridging the cultural divide in four bilingual combinations: English and Bahasa Indonesia, Burmese, Tagalog and Tamil.
The CDE was launched last January and saw 517 cases last year, which mostly came via its 24-hour helpline. The most frequent cases were salary disputes, transfer requests and physical abuse; they formed nearly half the total number of cases.
Nearly three in 10 cases comprised Indonesian maids, and nearly one in five involved maids from Myanmar, followed by the Philippines. The centre resolved 83 per cent of the cases, and the rest are ongoing.