DC wrote an article and was published on ST Forum on 10 Mar. Here what he says:
IT IS ironic that with the days off for maids, employers with young children and the elderly must now have to work even harder.
Otherwise, who will do the chores and look after the children and the elderly when the maids are enjoying their days off?
My annual leave allocation will not increase, so if no one does the chores, it will only mean that the maid will have to do double the amount of work the day after her day off.
I agree with him totally. Why did we employ a maid in the first place? It is to allow us to spend more time with our family without worrying about household chores! Now that the law mandates us to give maid a weekly break, who is to give us parents a break?
As parents of two and employer of a maid for 9 months, I'm proud to say that we are still very hands-on with taking care of our kids. Our maid is only assigned with cooking, feeding A with his lunch and dinner (one of us sit beside to play with him while maid feeds him), packing his school bag and preparation of bath water, that's all. DC takes care of A in all other aspect (used to be me) such as morning/night feed and bath. I am looking after all of B's needs now. I'm sure anyone who has children would know that taking care of an active boy and a newborn girl is not easy. Our maid just need to keep the house clean, prepare my lunch and the family's dinner on alternate weekdays and weekends. The rest of the times, she rests. We don't even have time to rest!
I must say that our maid's well-being is very well-taken care of and in fact, my family thought that she was very "好命" compared to others. She only started cooking last month because I am now at home on maternity leave. For the past months, she had us packed her lunches and cooked her dinners. She gets to carry my LV bags which was stuffed with baby stuffs (now no more as we got her another baby bag) and she was treated like a guest in my parent's home (my mom stuffs her with food and cold drinks!). She watches TV with us, eat the same food with us and she gets to call her family regularly (on us)!
Lately, she made requests to buy her ointments from her home country, to take time off to buy clothes, to cut her hair with a specific style she spotted from TV and to have a handphone. While we rejected the request to get her a handphone, we did accomodate all other requests. I even went to the internet to search for that said hairstyle so that she could show it to the haircutter! There was once we brought her to a gathering and she was enjoying herself watching tv in an air-con room while DC and I chased after our child in the house. DC ended up not able to spare himself time to chat with his friends! Makes us wonder if we were too good to her?
Lately, she made some friends from A's school and she sneaked out of the school compound with them without informing my FIL who was also there waiting for A to end his lesson! Last Thursday, she even rejected my in-laws' request to go their home on Fri! We started to sense some defiance here...
Now I kept hearing her say, "My friend say this, say that". What happens if she made more friends during her off days? How would she behave under peer influence, I wonder?
When the time comes, we would probably buy her off days or, grant her off during weekdays... off during weekend is just not possible now!
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Domestic Help Arrives
Maid - To have or not to have?
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