Sun, 25 May 2008
Hong Kong - Forty per cent of Indonesian maids working in Hong Kong are made to hand over their passports on arrival to employment agencies, a pressure group claimed Sunday. The women's passports are illegally held while they are made to repay high commission rates for finding jobs for foreign domestic helpers in the wealthy former British colony, the group said. A protest was staged Sunday at the Indonesian consulate by the group which accused officials of turning a "blind eye" to the tactics used by employment agencies. Eni Lestari, spokeswoman for the United Indonesians Against Overcharging, said the protestors wanted the consulate to stop exorbitant fees and the illegal confiscation of passports. Forty per cent of the more than 100,000 Indonesian women working as maids had their passports held upon arrival by agencies who charge maids almost 2,700 US dollars to find them jobs, Lestari said. Women usually had to pay the money - equivalent to more than six months' wages - within seven months of arriving in the city of 6.9 million, she said. "To make sure the payment is settled, they hold the passports," Lestari said. More than 200,000 women from the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand work as live-in maids for Hong Kong, earning a government- set minimum wage of around 420 US dollars a month.
