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Maid Employment “Culture” for Singapore Expats
By admin | January 16, 2010
As an expatriate working in Singapore, you may find that the pace of life here is very fast compared to back home. It is almost a mad rush everyday as you rush to work and rush back home.
Sometimes, you may need to travel and you could hardly spend much time with your children and your spouse. As such, it may be a good idea to employ a Singapore maid or domestic helper to help take care of them.
There are about 160,000 domestic helpers or foreign domestic workers (an official term used by the Ministry of Manpower here). Many of these workers come from the neighboring countries of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines.
One of the key challenges of employing a maid is that of communication. Since the culture of the home countries of the maids is very different compared to the Western countries, some misunderstanding may be inevitable.
For instance, some expat employers expect the girl to eat certain food that they may not like. However, in many of the Asian culture, it is impolite to say “no” to one’s employer. As such, they will always nod their heads and agree.
Unfortunately, they are still unable to bring themselves to eat the food. This “yes” thing is equally applicable to doing certain chores they may not like. Or, if you ask whether they have done certain things, they may even nod “yes” although they didn’t do it in the first place.
Hence, you would have to understand their cultures well to reduce any misunderstanding or unhappiness. When in doubt, always check with the maid agency for advice.
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