All About Full-Time Maids

[dooelsie]

anxiousmum2010:

Hi all.. i have been employing maids for 13yrs now. Tried filipinos, indos and myanmese.

Although luck really does play a part in getting a good helper, i would really advise everyone against getting a myanmese maid.
below is a quick summary of my experience with Myanmese maids:
- rude
- doesnt like to listen / follow instructions
- goes on strike when you tell her off.
( refused to eat/sleep after i told her off for using her leg to wash my kid's backside)
-doesnt apologise.
-tell lies to gain sympathy/ escape scolding when she did wrong
-dont like children
-very high ego
-unhygenic.. no matter how u teach, she wont learn.

mine even hit my kid and i reported police. Eventually send back to agent cos of her outstanding loan ( cant send back to own country)

so all employer out there... beware of myanmese maids,.
appear to be nice, but very \"bad hearted'.

Yes, totally agree to the above :celebrate: yes shuod avoid employing them. Mine was like urs excpt never hit child. im now using filipina and appreciate her more after bad nitemare with burmese.
I notice united channl dont dispatch good maids, maybe they are \"overspecialized\" hee hee :lol: I heard their maids salary is highr than others. My friend did use them 4 yrs back and she got a maid frm them that started crying when sh took her home,maid say she expected to c a hospital and didnt know she was here as maid. Lucky my friend spoke with her and she finish contract, after tht 2 other maids she employed frm them didnt work out, dont seem to know that they are here to be a maid. So looks like this agency has bad contact with agent in burma, lots of lies to the maid just to come in.

[hquek]

Umm, beg to differ. I am now employing a Myanmese maid (Christian if that makes a difference) - it’s been almost 3 months.


Cons:
1. She doesn’t quite understand spoken english. So we are ‘training’ her to learn english and chinese. She’s getting better by the day.
2. Not too hygienic but we’re getting her there. At least she doesn’t go through 1 big tube of toothpaste in 2 weeks (unlike my last Indo maid).
3. Still a bit blur whose clothes are whose.

Pros:
1. She always has a cheery face for us. unlike my previous indo maids who could give me sullen/black face, she has not done that.
2. When she sees me cleaning the table/washing stuff, she’ll immediately pop over and say "Ma’am, I do".
3. She’s suitably grateful when we give her things or say thanks to her for good job done.

I won’t say it’s definitely all smooth sailing, we are giving her credit for being new and being ready to learn. Not sure if her job attitude is becos of her stint in India (apparently there are loads of Myanmese who worked as domestic help in India before), but certainly I’m grateful when the maid doesn’t give me too much issues.

[hquek]

LKVM:

I guess every nationality have their pros and cons and we should see what works best for us interms of sal, communication and other details

Very true. I used to be hesitant about trying Myan maids becos I heard how strong willed they can be etc. But this lady really makes for a refreshing change (at least she can makan pork). Indo maids, I still willing to try. But Fili maids, I have my reservations - mouthy a bit hard for me.

[happy to be mum]

totally agree with you phinoy maids sure know how to yak! mine yaks alot but i am tolerating it cause she is still doing a not too bad job beside her yakking & hubby always said to me if they dun yak, maybe head will go "kuku" so far this is my first maid so i can’t comment on other nationalities.


ytd saw an incident which made me boil! i brought my DS to school & on my way home, saw a little boy (same sch) as my DS walking the opposite direction away fr school. As I walked, I saw the lady beside the little boy, beating & pushing the little boy away. Initially i cannot confirm whether the lady was the mum or helper so I walked faster to have a close look. My hutch was right, it was a domestic helper and the way she treats the little boy was too much for me to handle. Hence I asked her what was wrong with little boy and she replied to me in quite a hostile way that the boy has lost his wallet. The way she treated the little boy to me was abused already and the poor boy was like under her mercy, begging her to bring him to school, crying.

In the end, i went back to school to report (managed to get hold of the little boy’s name) cause I felt that the parents should know their maid is not treating their son well, even if he is a naughty boy, the maid has no right to beat him and push him away.

[DesertWind]

happy to be mum:

ytd saw an incident which made me boil! As I walked, I saw the lady beside the little boy, beating & pushing the little boy away. My hutch was right, it was a domestic helper .... The way she treated the little boy to me was abused already and the poor boy was like under her mercy, begging her to bring him to school, crying.


In the end, i went back to school to report (managed to get hold of the little boy's name) cause I felt that the parents should know their maid is not treating their son well, even if he is a naughty boy, the maid has no right to beat him and push him away.

hi happy to be mum,

Glad you intervened! I believe since we are so heavily reliant on maids nowadays in Singapore, parents, passer-bys, neighbours etc. should help out one another to look out for such incidences and report them to the parents, neighbours and schools indeed!

There were a couple of times my neighbours told me my boy seemed to be crying quite a lot during the day/night and asked whether everything was ok with the maid? So I went back to ask the maid and realized that no matter how good the maid is, they will not tell everything if not to their advantage and really I was alarmed although grateful to my neighbours for telling me something about my boy during the day when I am not around, to investigate.

I hope for such cases, us Singaporeans will not be like typically bo-chap as in usually people will not interfere/intervene in public quarrels, fights etc. But in such instances involving domestic maids and young children, we should all stand up and speak up and help our fellow-men!
:celebrate:

[moonee]

Hi hquek, Do u mind sharing the name of the agency your maid comes from?

I just like to check them out, Im still looking around for an agent that supply Mynmars. I chose to use U.Channel cos I thought that as a specialist in Mynmar maids, their selection of girls should be of a certain standard but it seems like they are not very selective with their recruitment and there is only one lady that speaks burmese in another branch. If I had known that arrangements had to be made for me to call their councellor and drive all the way to Katong, i would hv used any other agent that supplies all nationalities. :lol:

[ftco]

My Filipino maid is planning on going for 2 weeks home leave later half of next month. As her work permit will expire early March, I will be extending it prior to her home leave.


For home leave, I hear that there is some sort of bond or procedure to do at the Philipine embassy. As I intend to do all this on my own, can anyone with experience advise what the steps involved are?

[catang]

LKVM:

happy to be mum:

maids maids maids...without them, our work, family, social life might be haywire especially for those parents (like me) that do not have a very strong supports from our parents, (my mum never takes care of any of my siblings' kids and i know she does not want to take care of kids so dun even want to bother her, my dad has already passed away, my in-laws dunno where... therefore to those parents who have great support from your parents (our kids's grandparent), appreciate and be very thankful to them..


seriously, our govt is not doing enough at all to encourage parents or married couple to give birth to more kids as the costs are so high, especially with the increase of the maids's salary now increasing so much.

for me, if my maid does not give me any problems, whole household run smoothly. But once she starts to give me problems, our family's life and relationship will suffer. If no maid, put childcare, also so expensive after subsidy and come back home from work, need to cook, feed the kids, guide them with their sch works, do housework, etc.. we dun have any times for ourselves, except to work, sleep, eat, take care of family and kids, no wonder people do not want to give birth!

now have two darling sons, heart still pin for a number 3 but with such lousy govt \"family support\" for us, (govt shld seriously consider to scrape the levy for those with kids) can just hope only and dun dare to try! just have to pray hard maid don't give me too much problems and continue to work for me happily then I can also work happily. But I will still have to mentally prepare myself for a backup plan of childcare in case maid just tell me anyday she does not want to work for me anymore.

I loved your post and have the exact sentiments but too bad can we really do anything about it :shock:

govt kept mentioning these few days abt reviewing the baby bonus or whatever they can tink of to keep the birth rate going up, but never did they mention at all abt birth rate low due to maid issues...tsk tsk

[tamarind]

LKVM:

catang:

govt kept mentioning these few days abt reviewing the baby bonus or whatever they can tink of to keep the birth rate going up, but never did they mention at all abt birth rate low due to maid issues...tsk tsk

Yes right... i dunno why

That is because many men think that we should not be too dependent on maids.

Someone in another thread advised that we should try to train our husbands to do house work, so we don't need maids :roll: Anyone successful in doing so ?

[DesertWind]

tamarind:

That is because many men think that we should not be too dependent on maids. Someone in another thread advised that we should try to train our husbands to do house work, so we don't need maids :roll: Anyone successful in doing so ?

Hi tamarind,

I just got this feeling that if I try to make my husband do housework and look after the baby, he would sure to think I am incapable and probably \"throw\" me out (lets avoid the \"D\" word).

So better I earn enough money, hire a maid, let hubby relax (as he has been used to his whole life depending on his superb stay-at-home mum) and don't put it to the test, don't you agree?
:celebrate: