Current situation in Singapore

According to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), cases of physical abuse of foreign maids in Singapore have risen despite tougher penalties for errant employers, including stiff jail terms,

Altogether, some 150,000 women work as maids in Singapore, mainly from Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka.

A recent survey showed that the maids in Singapore were overworked and frequently denied food, pay and social contact, as well as suffering physical abuse.

Some forms of physical abuse include being trapped in apartment blocks, beaten, sometimes raped, killed or driven to suicide by their employers.

The Human Rights Watch says maids are denied other basic legal rights because they are excluded from the city-state's Employment Act.

Wages and work hours are left to employers and agencies, and maids have little or no bargaining power.

Furthermore, employers who abuse their domestic workers often enjoy impunity. Many factors militate against domestic workers reporting abuse, including restrictions on their movements and lack of awareness about their rights.

Such abuse is widespread in Singapore. In the past six years, at least 147 domestic workers have died in the city state.

Some maids manage to flee abusive employers, but bereft of funds and without documents or social networks, they have trouble seeking help or getting home.

Ways maids are abused

Psychological, physical and sexual violence

Maids are often at risk of psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. These risks are heightened given their isolation, the imbalance of power between employer and domestic worker, lack of information or ability to seek help, and financial pressures and debts that make them afraid to lose their employment. The risk of abuse may be heightened when domestic workers are confined to the household, and is particularly great for young girls, who are typically even more isolated and dependent on their employers.

Psychological Abuse

Many maids in Singapore suffered some form of psychological abuse. Verbal abuse—harsh insults, threats and belittlement—often accompanies physical abuse and takes place in an overall context of excessive workloads, sleep deprivation, insufficient or poor quality food, and substandard living conditions. This treatment reinforces employers’ domination and control over maids, making them less likely to resist or seek redress for abusive employment conditions.

Typical threats against domestic workers include withholding pay, physical violence, reporting the worker to labor agents, or reporting them to the police or immigration officials. A common threat against migrant women is that they will be sent back home, a terrifying prospect to workers with massive debts or who fear reprisals from their labor agents. Employer abuse, combined with isolation at the workplace, excessive work demands, and financial pressures may contribute to intense anxiety and depression. A maid in Singapore who had attempted suicide after suffering poor working conditions was interviewed and she said that she had no alternatives for escape.

Physical abuse

Physical violence against maids ranges from slaps to severe beatings using implements such as shoes, belts, sticks or household implements; knocking heads against walls; and burning skin with irons, among other forms of violence. Every year, Singapore receives hundreds of complaints about violent employers.

Employers may inflict physical abuse so severe that it leads to a domestic worker’s hospitalization or death. For example, in 2001, in Singapore, a maid died after a severe beating and her stomach ruptured. According to medical reports, she had been repeatedly bashed by her employer with his fists, a cane and a hammer, burnt with cigarettes and scalded with boiling water, the young woman's skin had been turned into a patchwork of scars, bruises and open wounds.

Food deprivation

One of the most common forms of mistreatment that serves to reinforce the inferiority of maids’ status in the household is the withholding of food, or providing poor quality or rotten food. In some cases, domestic workers are literally starved, and forced to steal food—and suffer sometimes brutal consequences if discovered—or to rely on the kindness of neighbors and others for basic sustenance. This treatment becomes a form of physical and psychological abuse.

Forced labor

In certain cases, the totality of the circumstances in which domestic workers find themselves—forced confinement, restricted communication, abuse, unreasonably high debts and work under threat—amount to situations of forced labor.
Under international law, forced labor is work or service extracted by menace of penalty and without consent. In Singapore, Human Rights Watch spoke with migrant domestic workers who felt they had no choice but to endure poor working conditions and at times serious abuses. These women were confined to the workplace, stripped of their passports and work permits, did not receive their full wages, and sometimes faced inflated agency fees for transferring employment. They were under direct or indirect threat from employers and labor agents of being trafficked into forced prostitution, charged substantial fines if they did not finish their contracts, or being abandoned far from their homes. Adelyn Malana, a twenty-two-year-old Filipina domestic worker in Singapore, told us her employer refused to send her back to her agent or grant her a transfer to another employer. She endured six months of regular beatings and food deprivation before she was able to escape.

Sexual harrassment

Isolation in the household, and lack of privacy or of conditions to ensure their personal security, place domestic workers at risk of sexual harassment and assault. The true dimensions of sexual violence against women and girl domestic workers may never be known; under-reporting is likely to be significant due to workers’ isolation and the deep social stigma attached to sexual assault. There have been certain cases of sexual harassment in Singapore. In most cases, the victims endured sexual violence because they were unable to escape, felt acute financial pressure to remain in their jobs, or were under threat of greater harm if they did report. Workers who did denounce their victimizers were often fired and immediately repatriated