Sunday September 13, 2009

To pay or not to pay ...

Is RM800 too much to fork out for domestic help from Indonesia? Yes, say employers who feel that living costs of the maid and the average household income should be taken into consideration.

Hiring domestic help from Indonesia may soon become a luxury that many Malaysian homes cannot afford to have.

With the Indonesian authorities clamouring for Malaysia to increase the minimum wage of Indonesian domestic helpers or maids here from RM600 to RM800, it will be a burden for employers to pay the increased salary and absorb the higher cost of living to support the live-in help.

What is also disconcerting is the arbitrary action by the Indonesian authorities to raise the salary of the maids to a minimum wage of RM600 with effect from Jan 1 this year without notification.

Before that, employers were paying between RM500 and RM550 per month for their maids based on a memorandum of understanding between Malaysia and Indonesia signed on May 13, 2006.

“Indonesian maids brought here via the registered agencies, which are the proper channels, were getting RM500 to RM550,” says Malaysian Association of Foreign Housemaids Agencies (Papa) president Datuk Raja Zulkepley Dahalan.

The 2006 MoU did not fix any minimum salary for Indonesian domestic helpers but allowed the employers to pay according to the standard “market rate”, which was an average of RM525 at the time.

Raja Zulkepley says the “new rate” came to light when approval to bring in Indonesian maids were sought from the Indonesian authorities. He says the agencies were required to sign an agreement that they have to pay the RM600 wage or the job order to bring the maid in would not be approved.

“On paper, it is RM600 but policy and implementation are two very different things,” he says in an interview.

Despite signing the agreement, some agencies are still offering their maids at fees below RM600.

“The majority of employers are not aware of this change. The dispute arises when the employer needs to renew the maid’s passport at Immigration and is forced to sign an agreement to pay RM600 a month for the maid,” he adds.

Raja Zulkepley is of the view that RM600 is a reasonable salary for an Indonesian maid but RM800 is simply too high.

“RM800 is not justified. Employers have to pay so much higher but the quality of the maids is still questionable,” he says, citing running away, absconding, being physically or mentally unfit, and being untrained as common problems.

Sophia Chow, 35, feels that RM800 for an Indonesian maid is affordable for some families but the problem remains the quality of help provided.

A general complaint among employers is that after having forked out thousands of ringgit, they are sometimes stuck with a maid that is more of a burden than a help. And there is minimal recourse for a replacement as would be in the case of open market hiring and firing.

Chow, a working mother of two living in Damansara, Petaling Jaya, has a flexible schedule but work requires her to travel three to four times a year at one to two week stretches while her husband needs to travel one to two days several times a year.

She had to pay her maid agency RM3,825 in September last year for her current maid, Surni Asih, who hails from Cilacap, Central Java. The first six months of Surni’s salary went to the agency as well.

Surni’s monthly pay is RM530 and her employer pays for all her living expenses, which works out to around RM450 monthly, including for food, personal care items, lodging and medical costs.

As an added incentive, Chow gives her maid extra money for washing the car and giving her a back massage.

“I feel these incentives are good for her morale,” she says, adding that Surni gets Chinese New Year angpow money and new clothes for Hari Raya Aidilfitri too.

General physician Dr V. Sheila, 41, says RM800 is too high for an Indonesian maid in Malaysia.

“I’m already spending RM800 to RM850 monthly now anyway; I would need to deduct her salary for items I buy for her then,” she says, adding that she lets her maid use her phone to call her family in Indonesia without charging her and gives her a month’s bonus every year.

An important fact to consider in raising the minimum wage of the maid from RM600 to RM800 is the average monthly household income in Malaysia, which is RM3,686. As it is, if Malaysians pay RM600 for their maids, that constitutes about 16% of their income.

In Singapore, maids are paid the equivalent of RM800 but the average household income in Singapore is S$4,943 (RM12,132.41). This represents only 6.6% of their income.

Only those in the higher income brackets in Hong Kong and Taiwan are likely to hire a maid as it is an expensive exercise.

The Star Online poll (http://polls.thestar.com.my) gave an indication of just how much the public expects to pay their maids. Nearly 40% of respondents say that RM401 to RM500 is “fair”, 23% say not more than RM400, while another 23% say RM501 to RM600 is fair. Only 9% supported a minimum wage of RM701 to RM800. And locals in the lowest employment levels of the private sector here earning close to the proposed maids’ wages of RM800 have difficulty making ends meet.

Bank employee Rahman Sabtu, 25, who earns RM850, barely has enough to scrape by after paying for fuel, RM100 for a room in Cheras, mobile phone charges, food and other living expenses.

“To survive, I need to do odd jobs and work for my cousin who is a small-time contractor,” he says.

Indonesians who work as cleaning maids in their home country are paid between RM200 and RM300.

Malaysian accountant Ng Sun May who is married to an Indonesian and lived in Jakarta for 12 years shares that cleaning maids are paid so low in Indonesia that they opt to work in countries with higher wages and perks such as Hong Kong and Taiwan.

“Malaysia is at the bottom of the list. Even in Jakarta, we found it tough to find a good maid because they want better pay,” she says.

However, Ng says the job of caring for children and the elderly are left to nannies or “suters” as they are called colloquially there.

She says nannies are paid about RM600 to RM700 to take care of the elderly or children but never both at the same time because they are professionally trained.

“Basically, you will find that most cleaning maids are working towards becoming nannies or going overseas to work as maids.”

Raja Zulkepley points out that since the Philippines set its maids’ wages to a minimum of US$400 (RM1,396.40) in all countries, the demand for them has dropped considerably, resulting in more than 90% of maids here being sourced from Indonesia, Vietnam and Myanmar.

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