Authorities in Singapore have thumbed down calls for foreign maids to be given a mandatory day off each week, saying such free time would inconvenience many households.
While live-in caregivers here in British Columbia are entitled to a two-day off like all workers under the employment standards law, a big number of these nannies aren’t being allowed by their employers any free time.
"It is the same problem. If they complain, they get fired," says Grace Balbutin, legal advocate of the Vancouver-based West Coast Domestic Workers Association.
Balbutin notes that caregivers, majority of whom come from the Philippines, are supposed to be off Friday afternoon or evening and come back for work either Sunday evening or Monday morning, depending on their agreement with their respective employers.
But in a number of cases, caregivers are not allowed to go out for breaks and made to work on a "24/7 basis," much like what is being done to most of the 150,000 maids in Singapore who hail from Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka.
Hawazi Daipi, senior parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Manpower, told Singapore’s parliament that specifying a compulsory day off for the maids would lead to "rigidities."
Daipi stressed that maids nevertheless had to be given "adequate rest."
Overwork was just one of the abuses suffered by foreign maids in Singapore as highlighted by US rights group Human Rights Watch in a report in December.
The report also alleged that the maids were frequently denied food, pay and social contact, as well as suffering physical abuse.
In Hong Kong, where an even larger number of maids work, they are granted one day off every week and a day off on public holidays.
Speaking anonymously, a Filipino-Canadian noted that during the time she worked as a nanny in Hong Kong during the late 1980s, it was observed that domestic workers in Singapore would move to Hong Kong "because working conditions were a bit better."
"I’ve heard of cases where domestic workers are allowed by their employers (in Singapore) only a day off for each month," says the former nanny who is now working as an immigrant counselor in Vancouver.
The former nanny observes: "Caregivers are supposed to have two days off here in BC but there are a lot of cases they don’t get any time off from work."
Most caregivers in Canada come from the Philippines.
About one in six families in Singapore employs a foreign maid.
The US rights group Human Rights Watch in a report in December painted a grim picture of young women trapped in apartment blocks, beaten, sometimes raped, killed or driven to suicide by their employers in Singapore.
The authors of the report say they believe such abuse is widespread in Singapore. In six years up to 2005, at least 147 domestic workers have died in the city state.
Human Rights Watch said that by excluding maids from its Employment Act, Singapore is failing to comply with international law.
"A system that excludes a class of workers from labour protections, leaving them to work for 16 hours a day, seven days a week, for pitifully low wages is one that demands serious and meaningful reform," it says.
