Could a Singapore scheme for domestic workers be a model for changing Hong Kong’s live-in rule for helpers?

Under Singapore’s Household Services Scheme, foreign workers can be employed by companies instead of households, meaning they are no longer trapped in their employer’s house round the clock

Workers benefit from more freedom, regular hours, better pay and better protection, but are not allowed to care for children or the elderly. But advocates say it’s no magic fix: workers must still pay agencies and aren’t free to change jobs

Reading Time:5 minutes

Filipino migrant workers in Hong Kong. Photo: AP

Published: 9:00am, 19 Sep 2021Updated: 7:19am, 27 Sep 2021

Sampoorna Narayanan, 36, is happy. She works five and a half days a week as a part-time home cleaner and lives with three friends in a flat not far from central Singapore. She gets to decide what to cook for her meals and is free to move around as she pleases. Narayanan’s current life is a far cry from how she lived before 2019 when she was a live-in domestic worker.

Previously, Sampoorna was at the beck and call of her employers. While she had worked for four different households in the space of six years, the job demands always seemed the same. She would wake before sunrise to prepare breakfast for the family, then spend the whole day on household chores while also taking care of children or elderly household members.

“No freedom, every week only one time [I get to] go out,” said Sampoorna, whose one day off, like most of her fellow helpers, was on Sunday.

What changed for Sampoorna was that the government introduced a pilot scheme under which foreign workers specialising in domestic labour could work for companies instead of households.

Under this Household Services Scheme, which launched in 2017 but became permanent this month, women from India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Thailand are hired and housed by companies, which parcel out part-time cleaning duties to them.

For these women, who would otherwise become helpers living with their employers, the scheme means greater freedom, more regular hours and better pay. They also benefit from better labour protection. As employees under the Household Services Scheme, the women are covered by Singapore’s Employment Act, which details a maximum of 44 working hours a week, at least seven days of annual leave and a broad range of other protections.

Domestic workers gather on a grass patch behind Somerset MRT Station in Singapore.

Such benefits are denied to those working as live-in domestic helpers, who are instead covered by the skimpier Employment of Foreign Manpower Act, which does not specify leave or working hours.