KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian households can forget about hiring Indonesian maids.
Malaysian Association of Foreign Maid Agencies (Papa) has ceased sourcing maids from Indonesia due to exorbitant fees demanded by middlemen in the republic.
“We have stopped looking for maids from Indonesia and have started sourcing elsewhere for domestic workers for Malaysian households,” Papa president Jeffrey Foo told the New Straits Times.
He said recruiting Indonesian maids was no longer feasible as the middlemen’s charges were too high, between RM7,500 and RM9,000 per maid.
“The amount is not inclusive of what our members charge Malaysian employers,” he said, adding that with such high fees, an employer could fork out more than RM10,000 for an Indonesian maid.
He said this was a burden to the majority of Malaysian employers.
“We should not allow ourselves to be exploited by these middlemen,” he said, adding that Indonesian maids were also not up to mark
compared with Filipino maids, whose recruitment cost could be lower.
Foo said the statement by Indonesian embassy deputy chief of mission, Hermono, that Indonesians were not keen to work in Malaysia as there were more jobs in the country because of its improved economy, was not true.
“It is only half the truth. If their economy is so good, why are there still many Indonesians coming here to work in other sectors?”
Hermono had told the New Sunday Times that more Indonesian households had husbands and wives working, with jobs for maids opening up domestically.
He had also said another reason why Indonesian domestic workers were bypassing Malaysia was the belief that the country was not as attractive as Singapore, Hong Kong and the Middle East in terms of salary and earning capacity.
These factors also worked in favour of the Indonesian government’s plan to eventually stop sending domestic workers abroad by 2017, Hermono had said.
He, however, said the exorbitant fees charged by agencies, which ranged from RM10,000 to RM15,000, had developed asymmetric expectations.
“Employers expect trained maids after forking out so much money to hire them, but agencies would send unprepared or even incompetent maids because of the low supply of workers from Indonesia,” Hermono was quoted as saying.
Foo said in comparison, domestic workers from the Philippines would cost about RM10,000 only and their quality and skills exceeded that of Indonesian maids.
“The desperation of Malaysians to hire maids has also led to some Malaysian agencies charging higher fees.”
He said statistics showed that the number of households hiring maids had dropped in recent years because of the higher fees.
“Five years ago, the number of households that hired maids ranged between 380,000 and 480,000.
“Now, they have dropped to 200,000.”
Malaysian Maid Employers Association (Mama) president Engku Ahmad Fauzi Engku Muhsein said the association was also looking for alternative sources to resolve the issue.
“India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Myanmar are among the countries that we have been sourcing domestic workers from,” he said, adding that Mama wanted to also get domestic workers from Nepal.
Human Resources Minister Datuk Seri Richard Riot Jaem said he was aware of Papa and Mama’s intention to stop sourcing maids from Indonesia.
“We are aware of this and the ministry has been working hard to resolve the issue (of maid shortage).
“In fact, we have completed a report and will release it tomorrow (today).”
He said the report would also list the countries the ministry were looking at to source domestic workers. By Raymund Wong and Mangalarupini Muniandy