Myanmar maids

[hquek]

That is certainly heartening to hear. I usually only hear about those who cant think and squander their money on phone cards.

[Coolkidsrock2]

I had my share of maids who cannot think but they normally do not stay long with me.


Conceptually, it is the same for everyone. Just got to explain to them that there is an opportunity cost to money and we need to save for the bigger things in life. They may be luckier than us in that they live in the emerging markets and those who are sensible and save their money will have a better chance of improving their life. I too have to make choices and trade-offs.

One of my maids intended to use her savings to buy a branded motor-bike as well as furnish her new house. She already built a house (for her self-stay) after 2 years in the Middle East. Her parents already had a brick house and land + workers. Told her to think carefully because the choice is between a provision shop = no need to work overseas or motor-bike + furnishing new house = another 2 years overseas.

[piyobaby]

POA Teacher:

piyobaby:

[quote=\"yanyan\"]Haiz~~ my maid call home & her mum told her that her hb has a new gf.. Now crying buckets..haiz

To allow calling back home or not to allow oso headache!

Hope she is pacified now.

Sorry, but I don't think that there's such a headache.
It should not be up to us to decide whether to allow them to call home or not.
That's THEIR decision to make.
Whatever cards they use to do so is also actually none of our business, even though many of us would like to help them look for a cheap way to do so.
On the other hand, I also disagree that we should finance their personal expenses eg buy phone cards, provide internet access for them like some of the employers here. They are being kind and generous but others should not feel bad about not doing so.
The FDWs are our employees, not our slaves. Thus we should not try to exert 100% control over their personal matters. Neither should we be liable for their personal expenses.[/quote]For my case, it is up to ME to decide if she will called home or not simply because she is not allowed an hand phone while in my household. Knowing hand phone or no hand phone is going to spark off another debate, I shall not go there. I pay for the calling card for her to call home which personally I feel it's not too much since she abide by my rules that no hand phone allowed. But since it is not agreed how often she should called home if I pay for the card so if she wish to buy her own card and call home during her off day, it's her own problem.

Different employers have different ways of handling their helpers as like different companies have different culture for employees to follow so that there is no right or wrong, simply individual's style of handling them.

[piyobaby]

Coolkidsrock2:

piyobaby:

[quote=\"Coolkidsrock2\"]Western Union may be a safer bet in the sense that the maid just need to produce her passport at her home country to collect the money. Risk of spelling error in the name is low as it is based on passport name.


The risk of her using the name of someone else is spelling error in the name so that she may encounter difficulties in withdrawing her money, though am not sure how stringent the name check is.

My maids are not highly educated and they had no prior experience with the banking system and not sure of the spelling of the name of the recipient.

I supposed it make not much difference as most likely they remit the funds to a next of kin e.g mother in her case so producing passport for withdrawal might be out of the picture?

My maids only send money home just before their return. This is so that they have control of how the money is being used. Otherwise, there will be nothing left by the time they go home.

Am not sure how other maids experience is with calling back to Myanmar. We do not seem to be able to establish contact there. The message is to try again. Agent said it is common but we had been trying for months. Is it true?[/quote]Mine request to send money back every 2mths once her loan is cleared. I leave it to her since it is her money. On my end I'm only trying to offer some help since she is totally clueless on how to go about it. I do not wish for her hard earned money to be cheated away or fly away.

She tried calling back yest and the 1st try was bad due to bad connection but the 2nd try she managed to talk to her mum for a good 5mins or so b4 the line cuts off.

[piyobaby]

nkthen:

hquek:

oh, not sure if it's common. with Indo helpers, they (used to) send letters home. My Myanmese helper won't even try - she will only call home. The prepaid envelops I bought for her totally never use.

That's because the postal services in Myanmar sucks... big time. Most of the time your mail will be lost.

Opps....after yest's attempt for her to call back and she telling us that the line keep changing (unstable), I suggested for her to write home instead.

[fcmaid]

piyobaby:

nkthen:

[quote=\"hquek\"]oh, not sure if it's common. with Indo helpers, they (used to) send letters home. My Myanmese helper won't even try - she will only call home. The prepaid envelops I bought for her totally never use.

That's because the postal services in Myanmar sucks... big time. Most of the time your mail will be lost.

Opps....after yest's attempt for her to call back and she telling us that the line keep changing (unstable), I suggested for her to write home instead.[/quote]The connection will be better if the Myanmar side calls to Singapore.

If the maids are near the border of other countries, you can try to see if her side can receive the calls. The call quality will be much better.

[piyobaby]

It wasn’t that bad after all cos she managed to speak on the phone for about 5mins on the 2nd attempt before the line cut off. Her township is about an hr away from Yangon.

[Viene]

Hi, anyone has send their Myanmar maid for any English improvement course? Any recommendation? I really have a hard time to understand my maid.

[fcmaid]

Language can be trained. It really depends how often you communicate with her.

[vfong1]

hi, anyone train their burmese maid to speak mandarin?