Visa sought for live-in Filipino domestics in HK

MANILA, Philippines - Filipino household workers who are forced to live with their employers may soon have the choice not to do so if a visa for domestic helpers would be issued soon.

Rex Varona, Asian Migrant Center executive director, told GMANews.TV that different foreign domestic helper unions are seeking to professionalize household service as a decent profession by pushing for their very own visa.

With a visa, Filipino domestic helpers may no longer be bound to their employers' homes and would therefore lessen the chance of various domestic abuses, Varona said.

Live-in domestic helpers in Hong Kong often endure working for more than the prescribed eight hours because they are always on-call inside their employer's residence. Employers also often seize their passports or lock them up inside the house so they would not escape.

"The live-in condition makes the domestic helper hostage to the employer," Varona said.

He said more than 120,000 Filipino domestic helpers in the former British colony would benefit from the visa.

A Filipino domestic helper in Hong Kong, earns about HK$3,580 ( roughly P22,689.89) per month, said Varona.

When asked if the new visa would elicit more opposition from the migrant workers than support since it would be deemed as an added financial burden to them, Varona answered: "Even if it's an added cost, it is a necessary cost."

He said the visa fee is relatively smaller compared to the placement fees asked by recruitment agencies in the Philippines.

A survey recently released by the Mission for Migrant Workers shows most overseas Filipino workers in Hong Kong pay processing fees that are far higher than what is required under the law.

A study conducted by the non-government Mission for Migrant Workers (HK) Society Ltd showed that most Filipinas working in Hong Kong as domestic helpers paid “dubious" placement fees of P 60,000 to P 100,000 to recruitment agencies.

Another burden is the high cost of living in Hong Kong. The Mission breaks down an overseas domestic helper’s average monthly expenditure into the following:

• HK$ 156 for food
• HK$ 63 for clothing
• HK$ 85 for personal groceries
• HK$ 136 for phone cards
• HK$ 381 for savings, and
• HK$ 404 for non-agency related debt

The Mission said that with such burden, “it is astonishing" that overseas Filipino workers in Hong Kong can still remit money to their families.

According to Varona, this various forms of exploitation and abuses would only be put to an end once domestic worker unions take a collective stand on the issue.

He said the organizations of household service workers in Hong Kong has been actively participating in pushing for better treatment and rights from their employers. - GMANews.TV

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