HONG KONG–According to the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) conservative estimation there are about 53 million domestic workers worldwide. However, a more accurate figure puts their number at closer to 100 million. Among this uncertain numerical figure, most are women. 41% of all domestic workers are in the Asia Pacific region.
Being one of Asia’s wealthiest locales, there are around 319,325 domestic workers in Hong Kong, comprising 4.4% of the city’s total population. Since opening its doors to domestic workers in the 70s, domestic workers who originate mostly from the Philippines and Indonesia flock to find works in the Asian financial hub. Nevertheless, Hong Kong is anything but an employment opportunity idyll for its domestic workers.
Over the years, the authorities of Hong Kong have come to implement a two-tiered system of minimal wage. While the minimum wage of everyone else is anywhere between $5,760 HK ($746 USD) to $6,240 HK ($800 USD) a month, for domestic workers, the minimum wage is only $ 4,010 HK ($515 USD) per month. To make matters worse, since 2003, Hong Kong has been requiring domestic workers to stay with their employers. The implication of this regulation is that, in addition to the limitless working hours in Hong Kong, domestic workers—living with their employers—without cease, find themselves at their employers’ disposal. Most are only allowed one day off and they work more than 100 hours per week. Furthermore, the meager amount of money they earn in exchange for their physical labor must divided to be sent back home as remittance as well as to pay their work allocation agency. Thus, most also live in penury.
In addition to the near non-existent labor rights, domestic workers in Hong Kong are also vulnerable to physical abuses. Every year, there are news of physical abuses of domestic workers—also referred to euphemistically in Hong Kong as “helpers”—by their employers. The case of 23-year-old Erwiana Sulistyaningsih from Java, Indonesia, horrifyingly illustrates the ordeals that many domestic workers face.
In January 2014, Sulistyaningsih was hospitalized in Sragen, Indonesia, after having suffered months of torture under the hand of her employer, Law Wan Tung, a 44-year-old mother of two. The 23-year-old was severely burned with an iron and badly injured with a ruler, clothes hangers and a mop. When she was no longer able to work due to her critical injuries, her employer sent her back to Indonesia, “parachuting” her with only about $10 USD.
Unfortunately, Sulistyaningsih’s case is not unique. In September 2013, a couple was arrested for burning their domestic worker with an iron and hitting her with a bike chain. And around the same time that the abuse of the 23-year-old Indonesian took place, a Bangladeshi domestic worker was also abused by her employer—a 58 year old mother of two, who assaulted her by punching her in the head on several occasions, scratching her head with a metal brush and pulling her hair with a bicycle chain. However, the perpetrator was released on bail later during day.
Throughout Asia, domestic workers from poorer countries are under-appreciated and their human dignity depreciated. The case of Hong Kong shows that for some people, those from poorer countries who undertake “dirty jobs” can be dehumanized. In other parts of Asia, domestic workers are underpaid too. In Singapore, the most expensive city in the world, domestic workers only earn $316-$475 USD per month, in Taiwan their wages sit at around $510 USD and in Malaysia the average wage per month is somewhere between $121 and $181.
Sources: Global Post, The Straits Times , Quartz, South China Morning Post, The Guardian
Photo: Asia One