Looking Beyond Philippines For Maids

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN - EMPLOYERS of Filipino domestic helpers share the sentiment of Bruneian households who have begun to look at other countries to hire maids other than Filipinos whose government has stood pat on its decision to demand higher salaries for its `Super Maids'.

Recruitment agencies in the Philippines have lobbied against the implementation of a Philippine government policy requiring Filipinos working as domestics outside the archipelago to accept only job offers that pay no less than US$400 a month. Newspapers in the Philippines, a country with a population of nearly 89.46 million, have reported that recruitment agencies have organised protest actions demanding that the Arroyo administration review its policy on salaries of domestic helpers as this has led to a weaker demand for Filipino domestics.

Dubai, for example, has begun to shy away from hiring Filipino housemaids as a result of the policy, according to recruitment agencies based in the United Arab Emirates.

Unverified reports have also indicated that Filipino domestic helpers may be losing job prospects in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Like many households in Brunei Darussalam, employers in countries like Dubai and Saudi Arabia have turned to other countries such as Sri Lanka and Indonesia where the governments have not issued any policy setting high minimum wages for citizens leaving their countries to work as domestic helpers.

Philippine Labour Department officials have reasoned that the salary increase was needed because a monthly pay of US$200 is no longer adequate given rising prices of prime commodities.

This amount was set by the department in the mid-1970s when the Philippine Labour Code was promulgated.

Since then, prices of basic goods and services in the Southeast Asian country have risen significantly.

The Philippine government, moreover, issues policies governing the deployment, of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos for work abroad.

From April to September 2005, there were 1.33 million so-called Overseas Filipino Workers based on government estimates.

Although the Philippine government has been criticised for promoting the deployment of Filipinos as domestic helpers, it could not stop more of its citizens from looking for work outside the country.

This has in part prompted the Arroyo administration to launch initiatives such as `Super Maids', which, among others, trains those who intend to work overseas as domestic helpers.

Recruitment agencies in countries that hire Filipino maids, however, have argued that the Philippine government should have waged an information drive way ahead of its schedule to enforce the policy on maids' salaries.-- Courtesy of The Brunei Times

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