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Indonesia Plans to phase out Domestic Helpers?

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  1. #11

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    Quote Originally Posted by Open Casket:
    What you call corralling into dorms, others might consider a reasonable freedom to live outside their employers house and have privacy.
    Sure .... and governemnt sanctioned halal pigs will fly around these dorms and give them free rides to their workplaces.
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  2. #12

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    Quote Originally Posted by shri:
    Sure .... and governemnt sanctioned halal pigs will fly around these dorms and give them free rides to their workplaces.
    halal pigs...mmm. I might head out for an early lunch.

  3. #13

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    Quote Originally Posted by jgl:
    This.

    The article linked in the OP sounds great. But also, compared to anything else I have ever read about helpers and the Indonesian government, too good to be true.

    I can't find a link to the article now (it was BBC/NY Times/something like that), but was recently reading the depressing account of an Indonesian women who had been trafficked in the US. She was refused help at the Indonesian consulate when she made it there, and was contacted by the consulate after her story broke... only because they wanted her to retract her comments about the lack of consular support.
    It was this one here Shandra Woworuntu: My life as a sex-trafficking victim - BBC News
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  4. #14

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    Much of my family lives in a country where domestic help is quite common, and the apartment buildings have a floor for staff with small rooms and shared bathrooms/kitchen areas. I've always wondered why Hong Kong can't manage something like this. In my building there is all of this stupid wasted clubhouse space that no one ever uses. I would so much rather helper's quarters than mahjong rooms or whatever.

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  5. #15

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    Quote Originally Posted by shri:
    FIrst, they're not stopping helpers, they're just planning on corralling them into dorms (which will cost employers more money).

    I assume the dorms can only be run by Indonesian consulate approved places? More funding for the Jakarta establishment ...
    Sure.

    Virtually all Indonesian revenue handling positions are literally bought and paid for. Hell, you even have to pay a substantial bribe to become a bank teller. Now imagine what it costs to become a police inspector, or say (just picking at random here) a consul.

    It's like tax farming. Big up front costs and then a race against time to cover investment and get a return before the allotted period is up.

    So much the better if it can be clothed in some tin drum banging about national pride and progress.

    For the rest, if people want to travel to another country and clean my bathroom and iron my clothes so that their children can get an education and hopefully avoid repeating the cycle, more power to them and more convenience for me. Again, not big on knee-jerk virtue signalling stuff about 'exploitation'. I don't exploit anyone.

    I understand that some agents certainly are less than 100% ethical... but then again we're talking about very poor people who have to hock half a year or so of their labour to an agent to finance a ticket and their way through the necessary bureaucratic hurdles. Sure some agents are iniquitous. On the other hand, had said helpers stayed back home they'd be in hock to the local money lenders for life anyway. It's just one of those things. Life is cruel. Goes for all of us. Up on top of the world today, cancer tomorrow. Can't fix everything.
    Last edited by Kinch; 20-05-2016 at 12:37 PM.

  6. #16

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    Quote Originally Posted by merchantms:
    Much of my family lives in a country where domestic help is quite common, and the apartment buildings have a floor for staff with small rooms and shared bathrooms/kitchen areas. I've always wondered why Hong Kong can't manage something like this. In my building there is all of this stupid wasted clubhouse space that no one ever uses. I would so much rather helper's quarters than mahjong rooms or whatever.
    Because the live-in rules enables people to work helpers at all hours of the day with some level of plausibility. Give helpers an actual home, and it becomes a bit harder to keep them at work for 16 hours a day. It's about control.
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  7. #17

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    Quote Originally Posted by Open Casket:
    Because the live-in rules enables people to work helpers at all hours of the day with some level of plausibility. Give helpers an actual home, and it becomes a bit harder to keep them at work for 16 hours a day. It's about control.
    It was before my time but does anyone know what the original stated reasons for this rule were?

  8. #18

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    Original Post Deleted
    That worked well then
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  9. #19

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    Whatever the stated reason for the live-in rule, I think it is fairly obvious that it is done for financial reasons. Or in other words it is done so that the poor and middle class can afford to have a helper. Right now the minimum required salary to employ a helper is 15K/month (yes, ridiculous). If one had to pay a helpers wage + provide housing it would render domestic help unaffordable to many..like most other parts of the world where domestic help is rare due to the cost.

    Hong Kong gets around this by having helpers live in...they essentially remove the housing cost from the equation...which is a substantial cost. Helpers aren't even required to have their own room and many of them sleep in crawl spaces, garages and even in the same room as the children.

    Last edited by Open Casket; 20-05-2016 at 04:34 PM.

  10. #20

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    Quote Originally Posted by Open Casket:
    Whatever the stated reason for the live-in rule, I think it is fairly obvious that it is done for financial reasons. Or in other words it is done so that the poor and middle class can afford to have a helper. Right now the minimum required salary to employ a helper is 15K/month (yes, ridiculous). If one had to pay a helpers wage + provide housing it would render domestic help unaffordable to many..like most other parts of the world where domestic help is rare due to the cost.

    Hong Kong gets around this by having helpers live in...they essentially remove the housing cost from the equation...which is a substantial cost. Helpers aren't even required to have their own room and many of them sleep in crawl spaces, garages and even in the same room as the children.
    As you point out, the effect would be to see these less well-off Hong Kong families priced out of the helper market and thereby remove x,000 Indonesian and Filipino children from high school or college and shove them into their village fishmarket/garage/scavenging business/brothel/etc?

    Nobody forced their mothers/sisters to get on a plane at gunpoint to come here. They did it out of familial love and / or obligation.

    It's not perfect. Nothing ever is. But on the whole it is win-win. Helper gets to support her family, low-income Hong Kong family gets to send the housewife out to work in some typical C9 tea lady type job (which brings in a bit more than the helper's salary) and everybody comes out of it a bit richer. The poor Indonesians and Filipinos get to own land and build HOUSES out of it back home FFS -- more than any low income Hong Kong local could ever dream of.
    Last edited by Kinch; 20-05-2016 at 04:55 PM.
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