Dubious duties: Helpers ‘can still be asked to carry out home improvements or even give body massages’
Campaigners say duties should be specified in contracts to ensure workers don’t have to carry out additional or risky tasks, or work longer hours than required
Hong Kong’s domestic helpers could still be asked to carry out home improvements or even give body massages if they are exploited by their employers, a campaign group has said.
She said a list of domestic duties should be included in all foreign domestic helper contracts to ensure they were not unfairly asked to carry out additional, and sometimes risky, duties, or work 24-hour days.
“Domestic duties must be clearly defined and clearer guidelines must be introduced,” she said.
“For example, clearing or cleaning a large area outside the home of the employer, carrying construction materials, painting walls, general repair work or even giving a body massage [are clearly] not domestic duties but it is not rare for domestic workers to be required to perform these tasks which should be considered exploitation.”
The authors of the Global Slavery Index 2016 said the city’s domestic helpers, most of whom come from the Philippines and Indonesia, were the primary group being enslaved, as they faced high agency fees, 17-hour work days as well as physical and verbal abuse. They put the total number of people being enslaved in Hong Kong at 29,500, but campaigners estimated the figure could be much higher, with as many as 55,000 of the city’s 330,000 domestic helpers subjected to slavery-type conditions.