Materia Medica Malaysiana

Mental health checks for employers?

The mental health of prospective employers of domestic maids may be screened under a proposal to prevent the recurrence of abuse cases such as the one suffered by 19-year-old Nirmala Bonat of Indonesia.

This is one of the suggestions mooted to the Human Resources Ministry, which is drawing up a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Indonesia on the recruitment of domestic maids.

"It is a suggestion that we need to look into in our efforts to regulate the intake of Indonesian maids as well as put a stop to such cases of abuse,' said Human Resources Minister Datuk Dr Fong Chan Onn, after visiting Nirmala at the Indonesian Embassy here yesterday.

"We need to take into account the background of the prospective employers because if they have a record of being abusive or abusing their children, then they should not be allowed to take one," he said.

If the proposal is accepted, the domestic maid recruitment agencies would have to do the background checks.

Fong said the Government viewed this incident seriously and his Ministry would investigate how the abuse could have gone on for so long.

He said the Ministry would also look into amending the Employment Act to cover domestic maids as well to give them more protection in the event of injuries or accidents.

At present, the Act only covers foreign workers in the mercantile industry.

Other proposals include compulsory insurance coverage for the domestic maids. Fong said there should also be guidelines in place where domestic maid agencies are given regular access to the maids, for the first six months of employment at least to monitor their performance and the working conditions.

He hoped the details of the MoU could be finalised within the next two or three months.

He said although there were only two or three cases of domestic maid abuse which were reported to the Ministry over the last one year, they are "two or three cases too many." Fong said the Ministry would soon be calling all domestic maid recruitment agencies for a meeting soon to put in place better guidelines to safeguard domestic maids and ensure that employers are aware of their responsibilities.

Indonesian Ambassador to Malaysia Drs K.P.H. Rusdihardjo said over the last four years, the embassy had received 26 cases of abused maids but he acknowledged that the majority of employers here took good care of their foreign workers.

At the function, Fong later handed over a cheque for RM2,000 from the Malaysian Association of Foreign Maid Agencies (Papa) to Nirmala. Also present was Papa vice-president Jeffrey Foo and Maggie Phong, managing director of Agensi Pekerjaan AZ Sdn Bhd, Nirmala's recruiting agency.