HK eyes Bangladeshi domestic helps

Hong Kong is looking towards Bangladesh to fill its domestic help shortage as it thinks the country will provide a rich source of female workers willing to work at lower pay.

. deskbdnews24.com
Published : 14 May 2013, 12:37 PM
Updated : 14 May 2013, 12:44 PM

A CNN report said on Tuesday, owing to competition from countries like Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan, Hong Kong is now looking at Bangladesh where helps were available for $505 a month.

It said as rural Bangladeshi women are mostly interested to work at readymade garment factories under $100 per month, the pay package in Hong Kong would be a ‘lucrative opportunity’ for them.

Hong Kong received the first batch of 71 Bangladeshi helps recently and another 75 Bangladeshi workers will arrive in the special administrative region of China over the next three months, followed by 150 to 200 every month after that.

Teresa Liu Tsui-lan, Managing Director of Hong Kong-based Technic Employment Service Centre, a recruiting agency, said they arranged a training course for the helps in Bangladesh over the last three months where they learn Cantonese and Chinese cooking.

"We think that employers will be able to accept that," she told CNN.

According to the report, Hong Kong fears a shortage in its existing 290,000 foreign domestic helps when Indonesia will 'wind up' its labour exports by 2017.
Most of the current domestic helps in Hong Kong are from Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand.
"There not enough Filipino and Indonesian helpers around," said Teresa.
"Even though the salary offered in Hong Kong is higher, these countries are a lot closer to Indonesia so it's easier for domestic helpers to return home when they need to,” she was further quoted by CNN as saying.
Indonesia's Manpower and Transmigration Minister Muhaimin Iskandar had announced last year that his country would stop sending domestic workers abroad from 2017.
"The recipient country would have to recognise them as formal workers with certain rights, such as working hours, the right to holidays and leave as well as to a set salary," he had told the Jakarta Globe, a local daily.
Jakarta Globe reported that workers in Hong Kong were said to have been subject to abuses such as long working hours, sub-standard living and sleeping arrangements with employers attempting to cut deals to pay below minimum wage $505.