Indonesian maids in Hong Kong claim they are abused and underpaid

Jul 10, 2009, 2:52 GMT

   Hong Kong - Indonesian maids working in Hong Kong are physically and psychologically abused and paid illegally low wages, organizers of a campaign to punish rogue employers said Friday.

   Many of the city's 135,000 Indonesian maids are beaten by their employers and paid a fraction of the government-set minimum wage of 460 US dollars a month, two labour groups said.

   The Indonesian Migrant Workers Union and the Coalition of Indonesian Migrant Workers Organization want the Hong Kong and Indonesian governments to draw up a blacklist of employers and employment agencies.

   Launching their campaign, they said one employee was regularly kicked and slapped by her employer who stabbed her with chopsticks on one occasion and cut her pay to 38 US dollars a month.

   Many other Indonesian women are lured to jobs in Hong Kong by agencies and then paid wages of less than 300 US dollars a month despite signing contracts guaranteeing them the minimum wage.

   Complaints by abused and underpaid maids rarely succeed, however, as sacked maids are forced by immigration laws to leave Hong Kong within two weeks of losing their jobs, the groups said.

   The number of Indonesian maids in Hong Kong has boomed in recent years and was expected to soon surpass the number of Filipino maids in the wealthy city of 7 million.

   Surveys suggested Hong Kong employers prefer Indonesian maids to Filipinos because they speak better Cantonese and are prepared to work for less than the minimum wage.