PAPA : Most runaway maids mistreated

Wednesday May 23, 2007

BY SHAHANAAZ HABIB

KUALA LUMPUR: Between 80% and 85% of foreign maids who run away do so because their employers mistreat them, according to Malaysian Association of Foreign Housemaids Agencies (Papa).
Its president Datuk Raja Zulkepley Dahalan said employers make the maids wash their cars, their dogs, do too many things and work for too long hours, so much so that they could not take it any more.“And so they run away,” he said in an interview.
Raja Zulkepley also said employers should be penalised for their runaway maids and not the agents.“It’s like a marriage,” he said. “If a kadi solemnises a marriage between a man and a woman, would you blame the kadi if the marriage fails? It is up to the two parties involved to work things out.”

His statement contrasted sharply with the one made by Associationof Private Employment Agencies (Pikaps) president Datuk Abdul Baharom Ghani who reportedly claimed that 99% of maids who ran away had lovers in Malaysia and had planned their escape even before coming into the country.

Home Affairs Minister Datuk Seri Radzi Sheikh Ahmad said recently that an average of 1,000 maids a month ran away from their employers, based on current figures.He said there were also reports that some agents were working in cahoots with maids, encouraging them to run away from employers after the replacement period of three months was over.

This way, each maid can be “recycled” about four times a year and the unscrupulous agencies can make RM20,000 annually from each maid.Raja Zulkepley said about 100 of the 345 agencies registered to bring in foreign maids were under Papa and they were not involved in persuading maids to run away.

“So it is not right to blame Papa for the runaways. Any move to penalise agents for runaway maids should be done very carefully as we have found that most cases are due to the faults of employers,” he said.

He added that because Malaysia offered very low wages for Indonesian maids, averaging about RM500 a month, naturally it only got class “E” or low quality maids.