Outrage over marketing of domestic workers in Singapore mall

The Philippines is investigating claims that domestic workers are being put on display in Singapore shopping malls.

Philippine vice president Jejomar Binay says if the reports are correct, the practice violates international laws upholding the rights of migrant workers.

Reports from Singapore say the domestic workers were being ‘sold’ as commodities, and made to simulate duties, like caring for the elderly or children.

Vincente Cabe is the labour attache at the Philippine embassy in Singapore assigned the job of investigating the claims.

Presenter: Sen Lam

Speaker: Vincente Cabe, labour attache at the Philippine embassy in Singapore

LAM: Have you had a chance to investigate the claims? Are Philippine domestic workers being displayed at shopping malls in Singapore?

CABE: Well yes indeed, and the moment we saw the online report, we went to visit and inspect the Bukit Timah Shopping Centre where many agencies there are being housed, so out of the five storey building, almost all the tenants are recognised agencies, so some are small, some are big. Others, with the training centres there.

LAM: And what exactly, what exactly were the domestic workers told to do by these recruitment agencies in the shopping centre?

CABE: At the time of our visit, well, what we saw is that these applicants, if you may call them, are just sitting on one side or corner of some of the agencies that were mentioned there. So we were not able to see or confirm that they were being made to do some role playing, like taking care of an elderly (person) or taking care of a baby.

LAM: Have you had a chance to speak to any of them, did you get a chance to speak to them?

CABE: Yeah, that’s correct. When we went to one of the agencies that was mentioned in the report, we saw about 20 foreign domestic workers sitting inside that particular agency and out of that 20, we were able to identify and speak to about five Filipinas.

Initially, they said they have no problem, but to be sure, that they are not afraid of the recruitment agency representatives, we requested the agency to bring them to the embassy. So today, later today, they will be coming over to the embassy, so that they can freely speak or talk to us.

LAM: So you still don’t know whether these maids were actually made to role play in the shopping centre?

CABE: We were not able to see that, but one thing that I have seen is some of the bigger agencies have their training centres beside their offices in that building. And if it is a training centre, then perhaps there’s nothing wrong with them being trained on how to take care of the elderly, to take care of a baby or just plain working around the house.

LAM: Philippine nationals working overseas, of course, send back billions-of-dollars of revenue back to the Philippines. What is your government doing, to ensure the wellbeing of your citizens working abroad?

CABE: Well, that’s the reason why where we are in the countries where they are posted and we have to coordinate with the host government.

In this particular case, although we are (inaudible), we were not able to see any wrongdoing by these agencies, because they were just sitting inside the agency offices.

We brought this to the attention of the Ministry of Manpower of Singapore, that’s the government agency of Singapore, that regulates the business of recruitment agencies. So we told them about the situation and they went, told us that they will look into it and they will let us know.

Of course, it’s not only Filipinos, we are talking about here, there are Indonesians, Myanmar and other nationalities.