Maid Abuse in Malaysia

Maid iniquity is no longer a new issue in Malaysia. What is amah evil? It is known as an assault and coercive behaviour, which mainly includes sensible, psychological and at times versed too, by employer or house entertain members of employer against a person hired as a national economic aid. Malaysia is one of wealthiest countries in South East Asia and harmonizely acts as magnet for migrants fleeing here to die. In Malaysia, majority of the domestic workers ar full time workers and most of them bob up from neighbouring poor countries. thither be various factors that whiz to amah abuse in Malaysia.The unfortunate social function is that amah abuse does not only cause both intellectual and physical injuries to the amahs, however it also jeopardize our inter case companionship with countries involved. Hence, at that place is an urgent take in to solve this social issue. One of the major causes of wet nurse abuse over here in Malaysia is the lack of comprehensive national policies for maid protection by our Malaysian Government. As pointed out by DCruz (2009), foreign domestic workers here ar vulnerable as they lack of legal protection, which subjects them to any kind of working condition an employer sees fit.There is also no specific law in Malaysia on fierceness against domestic workers (wao. com. my). As stated by Lourdes (2008), maids ar stuck in a Catch -22 situation because the second they seek for help from the authorities, their employers or agents go out lodge reports against them. The Employment Act provides them the right to redress but the immigration Acts removes it by making them illegals living here. According to Dass (2008) in Lourdes (2008), the employers impart be informed by the agents that maids who misbehave would be given counselling but this counselling turns up to be filled with punishing and abusing.Maids are organism told that if they repeat their mistakes, they entrust be sold into prostitution. Other than that, they are slapped and shell in beaten in front of former(a)s so that the rest will feel threatened. In addition, the maids very own attitude too, contributed to the many cases of maid abuse. They are not serious in their work and as an example, according to Ho, his maid washed one bucket of the familys clothes and hid the other behind the house under a shed below the mango tree tree. There are maids who also tend to take advantage of their employers by stealing things and using stuff without permission.Based on Hos statement, many of his familys belonging including his underwear have been stolen by his maid before. This is just a real life example of what may have to why employers lash out all their temper by abusing the maids. The scurrilous mindsets and attitudes towards maids too, contribute to maid abuse. Many Malaysians have negatively charged perceptions of migrant domestic workers which contributes to the frequency and severity of abuse. They are often viewed as cul turally inferior, sometimes less than human, and not considered as deserving of the same measure and consideration given to other human beingnesss (wao. com. my).Adiwara stated that Malaysians have the intent to look down on Indonesians because of the economic gap amidst the twain neighbouring countries. Employers misjudge the performance of the maids and scold them unnecessarily and this may be referable to some shortcomings in the employers themselves. There are certain employers who are relate that in that location might be a rift between the youngster and parent when the children are culturally influenced by the maids (wao. com. my). Another party that should be put to blame for is the involvement of non-professional maid recruitment services, or more than generally known as the maid agencies.According to Wong (2008) in Azizan (2009), a lot of money will be charged by the maid agencies and in order to meet the market demand, a few of the agencies will hunt for girls fr om the village, get them cleaned up and will send them right out to their respective clients without any training. This issue of untrained maids is supported by the Malaysian Association of Foreign Mai Agencies (PAPA) president Alwi Bavutty as he admits that PAPA is hold responsible for the maids. Throughout so many geezerhood, there are kind of a number of negative effects that are being set which are caused from maid abuse and many people are reatly impact by all these consequences.One of the major negative effects and is commonly published in local newspapers are that the victims suffer both mentally and physically from maid abuse. As stated by DCruz (2009), the types of physical abuse are they are beaten, raped or tortured with zealous boiling water. To make matters worse, there are several maid abuse cases where babies are born from the result of rape. Besides that, nearly all maid abuse victims have been treated like slaves. According to DCruz (2009), they are given onl y plain rice, several occasions with non-halal food plane for those who are Muslims.Lourdes (2008) too, states that permanent working hour, termination benefits, sick leave, rest days, cosmos holidays, overtime and every other benefit that a normal employee is authorize to are not provided to them. To further add on, as mentioned by DCruz (2009), the victims are not paid wages for months or even years of tiring work. All of the above clearly violates basic human rights and the employers need to be taken into action legally. Negative effect is also put forward during the legal process to claim their rights as it is mentally damaging for the victims as stated by DCruz (2009).It is hard for them to avoid depression as they are forced to put their lives on hold while relive the trauma of the abusive days. Referring to Earth Times (2009), the economy and lifestyle of the familiarity will be disturbed due to maid abuse. For example, Malaysia maid agencies are predicted to suffer mas sive losses due to Indonesians indefinite ban on displace maids over. This will somehow affect the productiveness of Malaysias economy since because a large amount of domestic help comes from Indonesia.Apart from that, lifestyle of the community will be disturbed as tens of thousands of household would face difficulties due to the delay in the arrival of their maids and this would chairman to a larger obstacle in the long run as families will have a hard time coping with work and family without any extra hands. Subsequently, relationship between countries involved will be jeopardized. As emphasized by The Star (2009), In Malaysia, when maid abuse became a hot topic among both Indonesians and Malaysians, it resulted in causing Indonesia taking a serious action of threatening to temporarily stop sending heir people to work in Malaysia.This has caused the political relationship between Indonesia and Malaysia to become awkward and it took a lot of effort to restore the friendship be tween the two countries. The maid abuse cases which were made known internationally have indirectly portray Malaysia as a cruel country. all(prenominal) problem has its own solution and this goes to maid abuse too. This problem provide be curbed with the roles of politics and community. Both have to perform their roles in order to overcome this issue. The establishment toilette tackle issues related to the vex and welfare of maids.For instance, the government may to resort into measures like conducting random checks on homes. Through this, the early signs of mistreatment can be detected which will forbid this issue from getting worse. Referring to Boo (2010), there are no bare(a) solutions in solving the issue of maid abuse. The solutions in the end lead to the importance of education and enforcement. An agency responsible in managing the welfare of maids should be set up as a channel for the maids to know who to come to and how to report against their bosses who abuse the ir rights. However, education on their rights needs to be supplied to the maids first.Cooperation between Malaysian government and related countries such as Indonesia government is key in curbing this problem. As stated by Malaysian suffer (2010), there are several cases involving the abuse of Indonesian maids had been solved through the close cooperation between Malaysian and Indonesian officer It shows that this issue can be solves peacefully as long as both countries are willing to cooperate. Based on Malaysian Digest, (2010), our government and Indonesian government has taken a smart action by signed a Letter of Intent on the sending of Indonesian maids to Malaysia.This letter requires Malaysian employers to give one day off in a workweek to their Indonesian workers and their passports be kept by the workers themselves unless agreed upon by both sides that the passport be kept by the employers which occurs in certain cases. This had prevented misconstrue between the maids an d the employers regarding the maids day off and passport matters. As suggested by Hariani Azizan (2009), other solution to this problem is through the roles of community. There are quite a number of ways on how the community can help the government to overcome this issue.For example, authorities can organize a weekly collision among its community and invite the officers who are experts in the field of the maids rights to speak to the maids as well as provide check-ups and counselling for the maids without trespassing(a) peoples privacy. Another alternative solution is to actually wee-wee shelter homes for the maid abuse victims. According to Malaysian Digest (2010), Rumah Kita, a shelter home that was launched to provide temporary accommodation and food for Indonesian female migrant workers who are faced with difficulties such as being cheated by employment agencies or abused by their employers.It is more stiff when everyone in their respective neighbourhood take on the role of flavor out for any abuse in their community and report them to the authorities. To conclude, there is an urgent need for maid abuse to be curbed as it brings negative impacts to many parties, especially to Malaysia as a whole. Therefore, everyone including the maid themselves must come together as a unit and cooperate to demolish this issue.