I refer to the letter With a day off, more maids will now disappear .

To the writer,

You've listed out a whole array of problems plaguing employers. While I think that some of your concerns are legitimate (ie, agents not being held responsible, levy not transferred, ridiculously high fees for all sorts of things), I'm deeply troubled, and quite frankly, repulsed, by some of your views.

The solution to the problems you listed out isn't to target the most vulnerable individual in this situation who is the domestic worker.

By caging her in the house, holding her passport and preventing her from communicating with anyone other than her ‘master’ (read: you), you are not dealing with the problems relating to unscrupulous agents, questionable government practices, and the millions of ringgit made from Malaysians who seek to hire foreign workers.

Instead, you've made a human being into a slave, just so you can fool yourself into thinking you've 'safeguarded' your interests.

The repulsion felt when I read your letter was most present when you stated that the domestic worker who works in your home is in fact a ‘helper’.

If it is your true belief that domestic workers (oh, I'm sorry, ‘helpers’) spend all day ‘mistreating young children, watching TV’ and generally having a good time, then you must certainly have misplaced your smarts for spending all that ringgit to hire someone to do nothing.

I think it is time you and your fellow like-minded Malaysians, take a long hard look at yourself and ask this question:

‘What makes a domestic worker from a foreign country any less of a person than you, so much so that she shouldn't enjoy the same basic rights that all workers and human beings are entitled to?’

Your statement that 'the government safeguard its own citizens’ interests first before those of foreign workers' is deeply racist, and tells me that you do not value all human beings as equal with inherent, indivisible rights.

In simple words, your statements says that Malaysians are superior to ‘these foreign people’. Yes, the government should certainly safeguard the rights and interests of it's own citizens, but not by enslaving others.

I hope one day our country will not be in such a dire economic state that our children will be forced to work as domestic workers in other lands.

For if that day comes, and God forbid your children be made to do so, your comments may come back to haunt you so.