Maid to order: ending abuses against migrant domestic workers in Singapore

This report presents research carried out on the abusive conditions facing many domestic workers in Singapore. It suggests that many women domestic workers face poor working conditions, anxiety about debts owed to employment agencies, social isolation, and prolonged confinement indoors, sometimes for weeks at a time.

The Singapore government to date has relied on market forces rather than laws to regulate key labour issues for domestic workers such as charges imposed by employment agencies, wages, and weekly rest days. As a result, a migrant domestic worker’s fate in Singapore is highly variable. The report also finds that the Singapore government has instituted several policies that exacerbate domestic workers’ isolation in homes and their risk of abuse. Whilst in response to growing publicity and alarm over abuses against migrant domestic workers, Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower has instituted some encouraging reforms in the past two years, these initiatives, though important, do not go far enough. Singapore needs to do more to address the underlying inequities and lack of protection that result in widespread abuse.

A number of recommendations are given in the report, including:

• to the Singapore government:
  • amend the Employment Act and Workmen’s Compensation Act to provide equal protection to domestic workers
  • increase enforcement of the Employment Agencies Act to ensure compliance with caps on agency fees
  • inspect workplace conditions and employment agencies regularly
  • sign and ratify the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (Migrant Workers Convention)
• to the governments of Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, India, and other sending countries:
  • improve victim services at embassies and diplomatic missions in Singapore and providing resources including adequate staffing, access to legal aid, health care, trauma counselling, and shelter
  • regulate labour agencies and migrant worker training centres, and more clearly defining standards for fees, minimum health and safety conditions, and workers’ freedom of movement. Labour agencies and agents who violate these regulations should face substantial penalties
• to accreditation bodies and employment agencies:
  • implement a standard employment contract that establishes detailed protections on wages, hours of work, weekly rest days, salary deductions, and other terms of employment according to national provisions in the Employment Act and international labour standards.

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http://hrw.org/reports/2005/singapore1205/