The government seems to think of strange ways to overcome the problems that crop up from time to time. Now it wants to conduct courses for the employers and their foreign maids to improve the employer-maid working relationship. It is worried that the recent spate of maid abuse cases had tarnished the image of the country.Will such courses, that will incur additional costs, be the answer to the problem?

The incidence of problematic employer-maid relationship is rather low and the Human Resources Minister Dr S. Subramaniam himself admits that it is as low as 1%. It is difficult to understand why the government has to resort to organising courses when the 99% of such relationships are satisfactory.

Instead, what the ministry should do is to have a better and more stringent method of scrutinising every application for maids. The maids should be scrutinised for their attitude and capability to work as domestic helpers. Do they have the experience or training to carry out basic household chores? Are they aware of the working conditions in their new places of work? Are they aware of the employment contract, remuneration package and job expectations?

It is very disturbing that a large number of maids are totally untrained and unaware of the actual nature of jobs they are being employed for. Many of them are misled into coming into the country by being promised factory jobs, only to find out to their dismay that they have to work as domestic maids which they detest. How can we expect such a maid to do her job well if she hates what she is doing?

The employers, too, should be scrutinised to ensure those with bad records are not approved. A visit to the residence of the applicant will give a clear picture of the working conditions of the maids. Even after the maid is employed the officials from the ministry should conduct spot checks on the maids at their places of work to ensure that the employer-maid relationship is satisfactory.

The maid agencies play an important intermediary role for the domestic maid service in the country. Despite the large number of such agencies, it is unfortunate that most of them are unprofessionally run and just to reap maximum benefits from the services provided by the maids. There is no proper selection of the maids in their country of origin. Name, age, health status and even the religion of maids are often falsified to meet the conditions imposed.

Very often maids with no basic knowledge of household work end up in the homes of employers causing nightmares for the latter. Why doesn't the ministry regulate these agencies more strictly?

These days, is has become common to have part-time maids who work from one house to another from morning until late at night. How can a maid be expected to be equally efficient in the afternoon when she has worked without rest in a different house in the morning? Besides being unfair to the maid, it would also be unfair to the second employer for the day as she would not be able to give her best although he pays the same rate.

The attitude of employers towards their maids is of utmost importance. They must understand the fears and anxieties of foreign maids when they first arrive in a strange land, with strange people and strange cultures. The maids have left their loved ones to come all the way here just to earn a little extra to support their family.

A little extra care, concern and kindness will go a long way to avoid many maid-related problems which are basically due to the failure to understand each other’s predicament.

It is disturbing that the caring attitude that was once a feature of Malaysians seems to be eluding the younger generations due to the demands of the competitive and materialistic society they live in.

Today, Malaysians seem to be obsessed with winning at all costs, with little or concern for the disadvantaged loser. There is a need to re-look at our education system to see where we have gone wrong in educating our children and to instill these humane values in them.