By SHAHANAAZ HABIB
KUALA LUMPUR: Desperate employers are being forced to fork out more than RM6,000 up front to local and Indonesian agents for their maids.
Home Minister Datuk Seri Radzi Sheikh Ahmad said that Indonesian agents were demanding up to RM4,000 through the backdoor to send the maids to Malaysia.
He said that said since the MoU had been signed between Malaysia and Indonesia last November, there was a noticeable drop in the number of Indonesian maids coming here.
This was because the Indonesian agents were unhappy with the agreed amount of RM1,300 per maid which they claimed was not sufficient to cover their expenses.
Under the MoU, the Malaysian agent gets a profit of RM630 per maid while the Indonesian agent makes RM460.
“The Malaysian side is happy. But the Indonesian side is grumbling. So we are looking at raising it a bit,” he told reporters after the opening of the Biosafety and Biosecurity Asia 2007 conference.
Under the MoU, the Malaysian employer pays RM2,415 to the Malaysian agent, while the Indonesian maid pays RM1,300 to the Indonesian agent to come over.
But because of the shortage of Indonesian maids, the desperate employer is now willing to pay RM4,000 on behalf of the maid to the Indonesian agent in addition to the RM2,415 to the Malaysian agent.
Radzi will meet his Indonesian counterpart later this month to review the MoU.
Malaysian Association of Foreign House Maids Agencies president Datuk Raja Zulkepley Dahalan said the inflow of Indonesian maids had dropped by 45%.
“The Indonesian agents want RM3,600 to RM3,800 per maid and today that amount hit RM4,000. It is beyond our control,” he said.
