Explainer | Are Hong Kong’s boarding houses hotbeds for Covid-19, and what is being done to prevent outbreak among city’s domestic workers?
- While looking for jobs, helpers stay in agency accommodation, with up to 20 sharing a 400 sq ft space
- With two workers testing positive for the coronavirus, officials are working to test 45 others
Another helper, who has tested preliminarily positive, also recently stayed at a place with four to six other migrant workers.
The episodes have highlighted the often overcrowded living conditions at boarding houses run by recruitment agencies, where workers stay as they wait for their visas to be approved. The process now takes about two months, almost double the time required before the outbreak.
On Thursday night, the government announced it would offer free Covid-19 testing and face masks for helpers staying at boarding houses provided by agencies.
Here’s everything you need to know:
Have officials tracked down everyone who came into contact with the two infected helpers?
Almost. One of them left her employer on June 20 to look for a new job, and first stayed at the On Ning Building in North Point from June 20 to 21 with 13 other helpers.
The helper went on to stay at Fook Gay Mansion in Wan Chai with 28 other workers from July 21 to 25.
She stayed at a third location, the Causeway Bay Commercial Building, with four other helpers, from July 29 to August 1.
All 45 domestic workers have been tracked down and will be tested for Covid-19. But the worker’s whereabouts between July 26 and July 28 remain unclear, with authorities unable to get full answers from her because of a language barrier.
The Centre for Health Protection was still trying to trace up to six other domestic workers who lived with another Indonesian helper, who has tested preliminarily positive. That worker stayed at the Kin On Commercial Building in Sheung Wan for the whole of July.
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Is this similar to Singapore’s migrant workers outbreak?
They are different both in nature and scale. The city state was hit by a second wave of coronavirus infections in April that was largely driven by an outbreak among migrant workers, such as construction and factory employees living in crowded dormitories.
By August, about 50,000 out of the 330,000 migrant workers there had been infected.
The accommodation those workers lived in included 43 large dormitories holding more than 1,000 people each, some 1,200 factory-converted dormitories which typically house 50 to 100 workers each, and temporary living quarters with around 40 employees on various construction sites.
Reports have suggested some of those rooms were infested with cockroaches, and toilets were overflowing.
But in Hong Kong, only one domestic worker has been confirmed infected, while a second one has tested preliminarily positive. The city’s helpers live with their employers, and only have to stay at boarding houses when they are between jobs.
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What are these Hong Kong boarding houses like?
Cheung Kit-man, chairman of the Hong Kong Employment Agencies Association, said before the outbreak, there would typically be between eight and 10 domestic workers living in a 400 sq ft flat as they waited for the Immigration Department to process their visas.
But during the outbreak, up to 20 people could be living there. He claimed some domestic workers liked to sleep on the floor, and so the agencies would remove the beds.
The Technic Employment Service Centre has a boarding house in Causeway Bay that is more than 2,000 sq ft. Teresa Liu Tsui-lan, its managing director, requires all domestic workers staying there to wear masks except when they eat, sleep and shower. They also have their body temperatures checked regularly.
An agency employee lives there to ensure the workers do not leave the house unless necessary. Every time they need to go out, they have to tell the agency.
Liu said the delay in the processing time for working visas meant that while there were usually just 10 helpers living at her boarding house before the outbreak. Now there were about 40.
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Has the Immigration Department acknowledged taking longer to process visa applications?
The department said despite the outbreak, employees in the foreign domestic workers’ section had still been working to handle visa applications.
Earlier this year, a spokesman said, the government introduced a raft of new measures, including giving workers more time to look for new employers in the city after their contracts ended.
An application could be completed within two weeks after the helpers submitted all the required documents, he said, in contrast to agencies that claimed it could take two months.
What have domestic workers’ groups said?
Eni Lestari, a spokeswoman for the Asian Migrants Coordinating Body, supported mass testing for helpers and said the government should provide accommodation for those waiting for their visas to be approved.
The Immigration Department must also speed up processing visas, she added.
She said that, normally, each flat had only two rooms, equipped with bunk beds. There could be three people on each bed, while others slept on the floor. Some agencies charge the domestic workers about HK$70 a day, she said.
“It’s the cheapest that they can afford,” Lestari said, adding the houses usually lack proper hygiene because too many people live there.
The workers also have to cook for themselves, she added. She appealed to Hong Kong residents not to use the episode to discriminate against the city’s 400,000 domestic workers.
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What will be, and should be, done to curb a possible spread among domestic workers?
On Thursday night, the government said it would provide free Covid-19 testing and masks to helpers living in boarding houses. Laboratory staff will distribute testing kits to agencies across the city soon, and collect them one or two days afterwards.
The Immigration Department will also handle visa applications as quickly as possible, the government said.
Earlier in the day, University of Hong Kong microbiologist Dr Ho Pak-leung suggested that after the maids had finished their contracts, they should be quarantined for 14 days in hotels before they work for new employers.
He also suggested that the government temporarily ban new domestic workers from entering the city.
Following the migrant workers’ outbreak in Singapore, the government locked down dormitories with known clusters of infections, so no one could get in or out. Thousands of workers were tested every day, and those infected were then isolated. Thousands of workers who were not infected and were in essential services were moved to separate facilities such as military camps and empty housing blocks.
