Do Indonesian maids really lie as a matter of course?

12 June 2006

‘If you have an Indonesian maid, be very strict with her. Indonesian maids lie! They lie as a matter of course!’ I was quietly shocked by this outburst, uttered by a fellow guest at a friend’s dinner party in Singapore. Only hours earlier, I read in the local newspaper about an Indonesian domestic helper plunging to her death from a tenth floor apartment where she had been employed. In Indonesia, news items tend to allocate bad faith, bad intentions, and bad behaviour to the employer, then the recruitment agencies, and also to the government officials in the related bodies, the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration, and the Ministry for Immigration. The domestic helpers themselves have been invariably depicted as victims, and as largely blameless, even in cases where they have been perpetrators of crimes. It is fairly representative of the fact. In their country of origin – Indonesia - domestic workers are portrayed as puerile characters, easily manipulated, and hence needing to be given help and ‘guidance’. In their countries of destination, they were depicted as quasi-human characters bereft of any sense of ethics or morality, who would cheat, steal, seduce their male employers, and even harm the employer’s family without any compunction. Consciously I began to encourage acquaintances in Singapore and Hong Kong to describe their experiences of employing foreign domestic helpers, especially those from Indonesia. With research funding from the International Labour Organisation, who appointed me as their external collaborator to the Domestic Worker Program in the Jakarta office, I visited Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. There I spoke to a number of domestic helpers, employers, operators of the placement agencies, and the local Indonesian diplomatic mission. I also observed the attitudes of the community in general toward the issue. In Indonesia I spoke informally to returned domestic helpers. With the help of the largest association of agencies that recruited migrant workers, I was able to visit some major training centres. Then in Jakarta I interviewed the relevant department head of the Ministry for Manpower and Transmigration. From the beginning of my research, I experienced a steep learning curve. The returned helpers I interviewed told of working experiences in which they were initially overwhelmed by the urgent need to readjust their expectations, and to accommodate their pace of work to the demand. Some were more successful than others. None I interviewed had been physically abused or explicitly mistreated.

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Do Indonesian maids really lie as a matter of course?

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