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  • Katherine Yan
    • Nov 6, 2021

Foreign Domestic Helpers in HK

tw: mentions of physical abuse and sexual assault


Who are they?

As of 2019, there were around 400,000 foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong, with 98.5% being women and the vast majority from the Philippines and Indonesia. They comprise of more than 5% of Hong Kong’s population.


For most of them, coming here is a valiant but forced sacrifice — without jobs or opportunities in their home countries, they find themselves with no choice but indebt themselves to recruitment agencies and find employment abroad, separating themselves from their families and children for decades at a time to perform gruelling labour and send back whatever money they can.


However, the conditions they live and work in have received increasing attention from human rights and welfare groups over the years — for good reason.


Erwiana Sulistyaningsih

Erwiana is an Indonesian woman born in 1991. After graduating high school, she had aspirations to continue her education and become an accountant, but could not afford higher education due to her family’s economic situation. She then applied to become a domestic helper in Hong Kong and arrived in May 2013.


Eight months later, she was abandoned at the airport having lost half her weight, with injuries so severe she was unable to walk, only 70 HKD in her pocket and the threat that her parents would be murdered if she revealed the details of her abuse to anyone.


Erwiana went to court anyways, and she revealed that she was made to sleep on the floor and work 21 hours a day, without even her mandatory day off. Minor transgressions — even just being slow to respond to a call — lead to regular beatings with various household items: a mop, a ruler, a clothes hanger. When her wounds inevitably became infected, she was not permitted to see a doctor, and when she was finally helped back home and admitted to a hospital in Indonesia, she was in critical condition.


Erwiana’s case is perhaps the most infamous of its kind, receiving international attention and scrutiny. In 2014, she was listed as one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Powerful People, for the role she played in bringing her abuse to light.


Is she the exception?

Although Erwiana’s experience is extreme, it is far from rare.


Kartika Puspitari was tied up, starved, and beaten regularly. Elis Kurniasih was a mother of two, crushed to death by a falling concrete slab because of the poor conditions at her agency. In June this year, a Filipina helper named Eden was beaten and tortured for over a year, unable to leave the house and reach out due to coronavirus guidelines. In July, an 83-year-old doctor was sentenced to jail for molesting his domestic worker over the course of 8 months. In the trial, the defense lawyer allegedly said that the helper should’ve told her employer: “I’m sorry, sir, no.”


For every successful case, there are many more that don’t succeed. A trial is expensive, and even with NGO assistance, many helpers run out of time, money, or willpower. Others have been accused of lying, and their employers found innocent. Even in Erwiana’s case, her employer had cameras in the house, but was not told to show the footage in court.


“I was actually worried I might lose the case,” she said in an interview. “The road to justice was very heavy. For someone like me, who knew nothing, to go to court and talk about something I wanted to forget was heavy. But I was determined to fight for justice.”


And for every case reported at all, there are still more that never come to light at all. The police claim that helper abuse exists only in rare, isolated incidents, but a survey of more than 3000 workers submitted to LegCo in 2014 showed that 58% of FDWs experience verbal abuse, 18% experience physical, and 6% sexual. The problem is systemic.


The live-in rule, the two-week rule, and the agencies

Many issues can be traced to various legislation. The live-in rule and the two-week policy, for example, were criticised by the UN Human Rights committee in 2013.


The live-in rule states that helpers must live with their employers, which leaves them vulnerable to long working hours and enables abuse to happen behind closed doors. It was introduced in 2003, with the stated purpose of preventing helpers from taking on part-time work after they complete their domestic work, though there was little evidence of that occurring. Some say that officials are keen to keep it because it prevents helpers from being considered as “ordinarily resident”, which means that even after 7 years of living in HK, they cannot qualify for permanent residency like other foreign workers..


Furthermore, in a city such as Hong Kong, the live-in requirement means living standards are often subpar, with many workers sleeping on the floor, in the living room or with children, even in cupboards, bathrooms, and kitchens. A study conducted by Mission for Migrant Workers (MFMW) found that 60% of domestic helpers lived in conditions that threatened their health and personal safety.


The two-week policy means that a helper must leave Hong Kong within two weeks of the termination of their contract, unless they find another job within that duration, which means many cannot come forward without losing their job, their source of income, and their place in Hong Kong. Additionally, although domestic workers are permitted to stay should they have an active court case, they aren’t permitted to work during this time, which again means abuse cases are chronically underreported — if they can’t work, then who’s going to provide for their family back home?


Yet another aspect is the under-regulation of employment agencies that domestic workers rely on, many of which have been accused of ignoring and not caring about a worker’s rights. Additionally, although it is illegal to set the cost of a contract to more than a certain fraction of the first month’s salary, loopholes mean that many helpers arrive at Hong Kong several months of work in debt, leaving them locked in a cycle of abuse and exploitation.


Power

What makes abusers feel like they can raise their hand against their victims without repercussion?


Some will speculate racism, sexism, or classism, and while those do play a role, it is fundamentally about power: employers recognise that migrant workers need to be there. They are isolated in a foreign country, forced to live in their employers’ houses, desperate to provide what they can for their families. They are second-class citizens, with limited rights and limited voice — and many liken domestic workers to modern-day slaves.


So what can we do to empower them?

  • Treat migrant workers with respect and dignity

  • Listen to their voices and stories when they do come up in the media.

  • Talk about the issue and increase public awareness

  • Get involved in charities that support workers find justice and support, such as

 

Sources:

 

Writer: Katherine Yan

Editor: Kristen Wong

Artist: Pihu Agarwal

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