Move to stop Singaporeans working maids to death cleaning windows

SINGAPORE presents a shiny, modern face to the world, its gleaming high-rise buildings a statement of its wealth and regional significance. But such overt demonstration of riches in the city state – which sits at the tip of the Malay peninsula in South-east Asia – comes at a hidden cost, not least in the lives of five Indonesian maids who have fallen to their deaths from tower blocks as they were cleaning windows this year.

Now Indonesia’s diplomats to Singapore are pushing for a ban on domestic servants being used to clean outside windows.

Indonesia, which supplies about half of Singapore’s 200,000 maids, has asked employment agencies to include a clause in employment contracts that prohibits maids from cleaning the outside of windows or hanging laundry from high-rise apartments, Indonesian embassy counsellor Sukmo Yuwono said.

“It’s upsetting. These are human beings dying for nothing,” Mr Yuwono added.

Singapore is under pressure to improve the working conditions of foreign maids, who live full-time in one in five households in the city-state of 5.2 million people. In March, the government promised to make it compulsory that maids were given at least one day off. The mandate comes into force next year.

Last week, a court fined an employer £2,400 and barred her from hiring domestic staff in the future after a maid fell to her death from a fifth-floor apartment last year while cleaning windows standing on a stool.

Eight maids, all Indonesian, have died after falling out of windows while working this year, five were cleaning windows, Singapore’s manpower ministry said. Four maids fell to their deaths in 2011.

Local newspapers have published photographs of maids squatting on windowsills, crawling on ledges or reaching dangerously off-balance to clean the outside of windows in high-rise apartments.

“When you are used to a very simple life in the village, there’s no such thing as a high-rise building,” said Mareyeami, an Indonesian who has been a maid in Singapore for six years. “Maybe they don’t know how to clean the windows safely, so they will just try their best.”

The Indonesian embassy helped at least one maid return to Indonesia after her employer insisted she climb out on a ledge to clean windows, he said.

“She was so scared,” Mr Yuwono said. “But at least she is alive. I have to call the families of the maids who die. It’s very hard.”

Hong Kong, another destination for work-hungry Indonesian maids, sees far fewer accidental maid deaths because the former British colony has professional window cleaners.

Many Singaporeans who use maids are likely to resist a ban on what they can demand of their staff, said Theresa Low, who has employed Indonesian maids for ten years.

“Singaporeans want to get their money’s worth,” she said. “They really do work the maids very hard. Singaporeans don’t value them, don’t treasure them as they should. It’s tragic. That’s somebody’s daughter.”

Maids from Indonesia are often eager to please and may not speak up when a task is dangerous, Ms Low said. “Sometimes they know something is dangerous, but they do it because they want to work hard,” said Kartinah Yawikarta, an Indonesian maid who has worked in Singapore for nine years. “We come here for money. But I always tell the other maids, it’s better to go home with no money than to die,” she added.