All About Full-Time Maids
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Angelight:
Anyone hired Myanma maids before? Are they good? In terms of work attitude and communication?
My agent don't recommend Myanma maids
To employ maid is also by luck.. :love: -
anyone can enlighten me on how to go about direct hire maid instead of engaging maid agency service?
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Hi smilingqueeeeen,
We've been hiring direct for our last 3 maids (by referrals). But we still went thru an agent to handle everything as I don't want to go thru the trouble myself. It's true that the costs will be higher but the maid will pay us back anyway. The risk is if she turns out to be bad, we can't send her back to the agent and will lose all the upfront fees. So have to prepare to be very tolerant till all the loans are paid back
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The good thing about direct hire is that we have at least some background info about each other instead of relying on the agent and biodata. So there're no big surprises on either party. Our last 3 maids turned out to be reasonably ok (no major issues after closing 1 eye) and we're in the process of bringing in the 4th one, also a friend of my current maid. Hopefully she'll be ok too
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Hi all,
One day I asked my experienced maid why there seems to be so few experienced Indo maids in Singapore? Is it because most of them after some years went back home and retire?
She said NO, usually new maids come to Singapore for training and after 2 years, they go to Taiwan or Hong Kong to work! For Taiwan and Hong Kong, they cannot get a job without any experience hence they must be ex-SG! Their agent in indonesia will also encouraged those experienced ones to work in TWN or HK. Some goes to Japan but for Japan, you need to be EVEN MORE experienced due to their high standards!
My maid worked in Taiwan before and she could not tahan the cold weather (her nose bled) so she returns to Indo. and chose to come to Singapore again!
There are those who went to work in Mid.E as well but seems like they get abused quite a lot so she will not go even if the pay is more! SG is safe for them and the law protects them. Also the weather is warm and nearer to Indo.
Gee......how come only SG like to employ fresh young maids? :idea: -
Hi Desert Wind,
For a newbie maid to go to HKG, they have to study 4-5 months Cantonese in Indonesia, as compared to 2 months of basic Eng for Singapore. HKG employers do not like newbies as their expectations are very high and they don’t have time to teach from scratch. They want maids to be very independent & adapt quickly.
A friend of mine who is a HongKonger said maids in HKG spend a lot bcos they have off day every Sun and spend a lot of money shopping (higher pay). In the end, they have no savings.
Some SG employers like to employ fresh young maids bcos they have not worked as maids b4 and so easier to train and teach. Of course there is a lot of hand-holding in the beginning. After 8-9 months, these ‘fresh young maids’ have this mentality their wings have hardened and can fly. :x -
According to my maid, it's not easy for them to go to HK, they have to pay fees upfront which many of them can't afford. Also, if their employers don't like them, they can send them back home and all the $$ paid is gone. So it's quite risky for them. In SG, it's the opposite. The maids don't need to pay anything to come here. The employers pay and they just work off the loan. That's why SG becomes their natural stepping stone.
The other disadvantage for SG employers is we have to pay heavy maids' levy while there's none (I think still being waived) in HK. So even though the total out of pocket expenses are similar to those of HK employers, the take home pay of SG maids is much less than their counterparts in HK. This again puts SG employers in an unfair position to compete with other places in terms of attracting maids :stupid: . -
spore is a stepping stone to canada as well. out of 5 maids i knew living in my condo (while in spore) were waiting for approval to go there.
maids coming to spore or already here prefer to work for expats. they have day off, higher pay (which i consider quite ok) and other perks. recently came across a thread in an expat forum asking does she need to pay the maid to baby sit the children in the evening when she and hubby are out. and seems like the maid does expect to be paid becasue her friends are paid by the employers.
i recall interviewing a maid (working for an expat) years ago and was told she only work certain hours of the day, must let her go to playground to meet her friends after 9pm daily, all sunday and public holidays are day off, wont clean windows, no washing of clothes by hand, must have 2 weeks yearly holliday and expected pay was $600-700.
anyway, maids would definitely prefer to go to hong kong because of the strong support they get from various orgainsations there and they can always go to the street and protest at any issues. the laws there are more pro maid. -
minnie2004:
This again puts SG employers in an unfair position to compete with other places in terms of attracting maids :stupid: .
not only that, we have to compete with the expats here for maids. expats think we are treating the maids badly which i disagree. -
LOLMum:
i recall interviewing a maid (working for an expat) years ago and was told she only work certain hours of the day, must let her go to playground to meet her friends after 9pm daily, all sunday and public holidays are day off, wont clean windows, no washing of clothes by hand, must have 2 weeks yearly holliday and expected pay was $600-700.
Wah so pampered ah? But I think because expats are really not used to having maids. They think maids shopping for groceries for them is already a \"BIG DEAL\", great luxury to have a maid hence they cannot \"bear\" to ask maid to do the things we considered normal ie. wash clothes by hand! (I mean only for those fragile clothes lah not all!) In these expats' home countries, \"human rights\" is probably a big issue hence to have a \"maid\" seems to them to be something \"inhumane\" so they let the maid have so much freedom, pay, rights, whatever.....I heard before that in an expat household, the employer will demand the maid to sit together at the dinner table with them and eat and talk together!
Oh well, I am no expert but I think maids who work for expats are in a class of their own and I don't think they can ever work for locals after that!
:lol:
:celebrate: -
It's true that the expats (esp the new ones) are not used to having maids. It's so expensive in their home country to have maids that they feel bad to see the maids here working such long hours with so \"little\" pay. However, except for maybe those die-hard human rights advocates, once these expats are here long enough, they'll also follow local customs
My previous 2 maids both went to Norway before completing the 2-year contract with us. They only need to work 5 days a week, 5 hours a day, salary is something like EUR600 :shock: ! There's no way I can and will match that kind of terms . So I just let them go and wish them good luck. My current maid is going to Denmark soon. I've accepted the fact my home is a training centre for new maids and I just try to make the transition process as smoothly as possible.
I'm now videotaping my maid doing housework. So when the next one arrives, I'm just going to show her the orientation DVD (since this time the 2 maids won't be overlapping). Hopefully that'll save me some time doing training
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