Maid to order: ending abuses against migrant domestic workers in Singapore

Women domestic workers in Singapore suffer grave abuses

Published by: Human Rights Watch (HRW) , 2005
Via: Eldis

This report presents research carried out on the abusive conditions facing many domestic workers in Singapore. It suggests that many women domestic workers face poor working conditions, anxiety about debts owed to employment agencies, social isolation, and prolonged confinement indoors, sometimes for weeks at a time.

The Singapore government to date has relied on market forces rather than laws to regulate key labour issues for domestic workers such as charges imposed by employment agencies, wages, and weekly rest days. As a result, a migrant domestic worker’s fate in Singapore is highly variable. The report also finds that the Singapore government has instituted several policies that exacerbate domestic workers’ isolation in homes and their risk of abuse. Whilst in response to growing publicity and alarm over abuses against migrant domestic workers, Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower has instituted some encouraging reforms in the past two years, these initiatives, though important, do not go far enough. Singapore needs to do more to address the underlying inequities and lack of protection that result in widespread abuse.