Best Posts in Thread: They starved there maid

There are some pretty terrible things happen in the world. Some are acceptable at least by local standards.
I lived in Bahrain for 18 months and stories in the local (government controlled) paper made me shudder.

Family keeps Bangladeshi maid captive and without pay for 17 years. Their excuse "she was a bad cook and the laundry was not clean".
The court decided the family must pay half the wages and repatriate the maid. Wow.

Four young men take young Filipina into dessert and rape her, steal here cell phone.
Defense lawyer says "these are just young men having a good time".
Judgment: probation and return the cell phone.

Indian construction workers refuse to work. They have not been paid for 6 months.
All are arrested for breaking their employment contract and released when they agree to go back to work.
The employer is given a year to catch up on the unpaid wages.

Those little tidbits are not the underbelly of the country. This is mainstream over there.

 

Spit gum on the sidewalk and get caned. Hold someone hostage for a year and get fined $7500. F Singapore. It was probably the fault of the maid, maybe she was a picky eater....not. Some of these domestic helpers have never left their province and then they get stuck in a foreign country and are made to believe that they have no recourse. I personally know a Filipina that got stuck in a middle eastern country and literally had to escape the country before she was raped by the boss. It makes me sick when people of means abuse people who are less fortunate. I hope they rot in hell....the sooner the better.

 

Toss in some labor and I'm with you. Maybe digging with their hands.

Would it be too much to expect that they will be banned from importing domestic help again?

 

Biggest argument for organised international labour - then such practices would be stomped out. I see vile abuses of ofws virtually everywhere I go, in the west, in the east, the Middle East and I will bet a few places I haven't heard of.

(That should start a debate I hope)

C

 

This is what I was talking about in another thread. Nobody signs up for this kind of abuse knowingly. IMHO compensation should be in order for the victim. Not a fine!

 

We lived in Singapore for 3 years and it may be squeaky clean on the surface but there is a dark underbelly.
One case i remember is of an Indonesian maid to a Chinese Singaporean family (always seems to be the Chinese), the newspaper report was that when the mother and father were out of the house the brother and sister would amuse themselves by torturing the maid (maybe nothing good on tv), the torture apparently included pulling out teeth with pliers.
This was quite a while ago so i can't remember what the punishment was but if the brother and sister are still eating with their own teeth then it was not enough.

 

I don't understand anyone can do like that, 1 year in prison is a joke. Wonder what kind of punishment, a foreigner would get in Philippines for same ?

 

Now that's another story. And, I have heard some pretty bad behavior from foreigners here towards their workers.

 

I'm against prison on this fully. Its straight out torture, slavery, and inhumane treatment of a worker. Such things should have a very strict example punishment... death sentence. Scum like this its not that things are tight for a bit or trying to show dominance over a bad employee. Its the thrill of knowing you hold someone else's life literally in their hand and can do virtually whatever they want to that person no matter how horrible. That kind of scum needs to be wiped off the face of the planet.