Maid abuse in Singapore: Who's right?

Straits Times
15 May 07

3 weeks' jail for woman who kicked her maid in the face
Elena Chong

A WOMAN who kicked her maid in the face and repeatedly assaulted her in otherways was yesterday sentenced to three weeks in jail. Chan Chwee Fung pleaded guilty last month to three out of 13 counts of abusing Ms Nurwati in 2005 at her then residence in Dover Park condominium.

Chan, 34, had hired the 23-year-old Indonesian in September that year to help look after her twin children, who were born the following month.

The abuse began on Nov22 – Chan accused the maid of not mixing the twins’ milk powder well enough and hit her on the head with a cordless telephone. Six days later, she again blew her top at feeding time. After scolding Ms Nurwati for not holding a bottle properly while feeding one of the infants, she kicked her face once and slapped her twice. When Ms Nurwati held on to her employer’s arm to try and stop the abuse, Chan scratched her on the left forearm.

On Dec 1, Chan flew off the handle again when she saw a milk bottle in the baby cot. When the maid said she had stopped feeding one of the babies as the other had started to cry, Chan threw the bottle at her. It hit her on the left eye, causing it to swell.

In pain, Ms Nurwati cried out to her employer’s husband for help. When Mr Lim Ten Jek, 33, came out of his room, she asked for an immediate transfer but was told to work for another two days.

But she had had enough and called the police later that morning.

In court, defence counsel Kertar Singh said the stress of looking after the babies and coping with an inexperienced maid had stressed out his client. He submitted reports from a consultant psychiatrist who said Chan – a secretary by profession – was suffering from post-partum depression and a jail term would “seriously impair her recovery and worsen her fragile emotional state”.

But Community Court Judge Bala Reddy, pointing out that Chan could get psychiatric treatment in jail, said he would forward her medical reports to the prison medical officer.

Chan will begin serving her sentence next Monday.

Summary

This article basically relates the details of a maid being abused by a housewife she was working for. Between 2005 and 2006, Ms Nurwati was abused by Chan Chwee Fung, a secretary, thrice. Chan's misdeeds included hitting Ms Nurwati on the head with a cordless telephone, kicking, slapping her face and also hurling a milk bottle at her eye, causing it to swell. All this was carried out on grounds that the maid was not able to prepare or feed milk to the babies correctly. Chan's lawyer, Mr Ketar Singh explained that his client was suffering from depression and that she needed to be treated, but Judge Bala Reddy overruled his defense by stating that Chan would be given psychiatric treatment in jail.

Comments

Before dismissing this article casually, deeming it obsolete because of its typical maid-employer conflict, instead come to realize that it signifies a disturbing social trend, that is, the incidence of maid abuse is on the rise.

Be it accidental deaths by cleaning windows (February), employers raping (March) or physically abusing maids (April), long gone are the days where maids were merely responsible for doing household chores; instead, they now also serve as receiving ends of misplaced anger.

To me, maid-employer conflicts mainly stem from a huge lack of empathy on the part of Singaporeans. After recruiting a maid, the typical Singaporean outlook would be that the maid can be lorded over, simply because she (or he) is here to serve as a slave - and this is a highly fallacious mindset.

What Singaporeans often forget is that a maid, just like everyone of us, is a human being deserving of basic human rights. She possesses five faculties, possesses the capacity to think and interact with us, but most importantly, also possesses the capacity to feel a spectrum of humanly emotions - ranging from pain to pleasure.

Having forgotten the above, Singaporeans then proceed to treat the maid with contempt and disrespect. All this is exacerbated by the fact that the maid does not dare to voice her feelings out loud, in the form of a retort, for she is afraid that any action on her part which displeases her employer may earn her a deportation back to her native country - effectively rendering her effort to come to Singapore for work originally, useless.

The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) is aware of, and has come up with initiatives to help combat maid abuse. They include the Employment of Foreign Workers Act, in conjunction with a toll-free hotline manned by the Foreign Manpower Management Division, to help protect foreign workers.

To alleviate the number of employer-maid conflicts, I propose that we encourage more communication between employers and their maids. It is undoubtedly true that language will serve as a barrier to effective communication in this case, but I believe that it is only through communication can stronger bonds be forged between employer and maid. The employer can learn about some of the maid's problems and try and help her out with them, whereas the maid can on the other hand get a better idea of the employer's expectations.

I acknowledge that I may have been biased in my above perspective. This is so because my parents have never employed a maid before. Therefore, I would not be able to know about any possible maid-employer disagreements, and consequently, not understand how employers may get frustrated with their maids, and in the heat of the moment, physically abuse them, as wrong as the act can be. Moreover, seeing how the recent spate of reported maid abuse cases has been played up in the media, my thoughts towards this issue may have been swayed.

To end off, I would like to quote Thomas Jefferson on his take on human rights:

"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government."

Word count: 500 words (not inclusive of quote)