Living Where They Work: How This Facilitates Abuse

The leading cause of death amongst FDWs is falls from height, either due to workplace incidents (such as cleaning windows or leaning out of windows to hang laundry) or suicide. While the MOM disallowed the cleaning of window exteriors in 2012, other aspects of labour and living that create the conditions for loss of life—particularly through abuse and/or suicide resulting from abuse—remain in place. In 2003, the New Paper reported that since 1999, 90 Indonesian maids have died in Singapore—56 in accidents and 26 in suicides. At the end of 2005, the Straits Times reported that at least 18 maids had fallen to their deaths, half of them suicides. 

Our research reveals two data trends that are important to consider when we think about abusive workplaces and living environments (which, for FDWs, are the same physical space.) First, there were more suicides amongst FDWs in the last 20 years compared to MMWs. According to our data, suicides amongst FDWs make up 19.75% of total female migrant worker deaths, while suicides amongst MMWs make up 4.81% of total male migrant worker deaths. Second, since 2000, there were two cases of domestic abuse that resulted in the death of two workers—Muawanatul Chanasah in December 2001 and Piang Ngaih Don in July 2016. These workers did not take their own lives, but the root cause of death amongst all these workers is employer abuse. Other examples abound: Indrawati committed suicide in December 2005 after being sexually abused by her employer’s brother. Ma Zin Mar Oo committed suicide in June 2017, and a note discovered after her death detailed abusive work conditions, including being denied meals. 

As Bhing mentions in her interview, there are many types of abuse. Physical abuse cases resulting in death are the most reported, but there is also verbal and emotional abuse, restricting freedom of movement, denial of access to healthcare, wage theft, forced repatriation, threatening termination for non-compliance of unfair and unethical rules set by the employer/employment agent, and so on. A Burmese domestic worker, Cawi Nei Mawi, took her life in April 2011 because she was confined to her employer’s home. A eulogy titled "A Day Off Too Late" written by her friend, Cherry Hmung, who is also a domestic helper, shared that she had been unable to bear the loneliness of being "imprisoned". Like many first-time maids here, she had no day off¹. How many more are suffering in silence?

FDWs are not covered under the Employment Act², but under the Employment of Foreign Manpower act, the MOM provides a series of guidelines on the well-being of FDWs (emphasis ours). Employers are entrusted under current regulations to ensure the well-being of FDWs. But those same regulations also empower them with a large degree of discretionary power to interpret the guidelines themselves, leaving room for wildly varied levels of compliance. There's also a clear risk of abuse from the conflict of interest of an employer being empowered to decide so much of a worker's life. What we should be focusing on are not the rare incidents where whistleblowing was possible and the resulting fines, jail time, and/or strongly worded circulars by the MOM. Rather, our attention must be redirected towards the violent conditions that are baked into the fabric of a domestic worker’s existence here. The largest umbrella factor for consideration is the absence of fixed working hours and separate housing for FDWs, which allow employers to:

1. Deny off-days and limit overall freedom of movement;

2. Withhold mobile devices, passports & Work Permits;

3. Overwork FDWs;

4. Subject FDWs to greater instances of mental, physical, verbal, and sexual abuse with reduced chances of reporting

Violent Conditions of Labour

A cruel irony is that violence conceals violence. Living with employers creates the conditions for both the continuance and the camouflage of abuse. Most domestic workers we have spoken to (including Bhing and Maw Lwin in their interviews) have expressed that the ability to transfer or change employers is what is needed in instances of abuse. Although FDWs no longer need consent and letters from their employers permitting them to transfer employment within a 40 to 21 day window of their contract running down, the reality is that FDWs still find it difficult to change employers. This is because many migrant workers (male and female) don't get to benefit from the window of time supposedly available to them to change employers—most of the time they are repatriated by their existing employer before this window is reached, especially if they don’t agree to extend their contracts. With the livelihoods of their family and debt on the line it's clear why migrant workers may feel unable to make use of the ability to change employers, despite it being theoretically available to them. The ease of unilateral termination stands in the way of supposed options like the above and it is terrifying how quickly a migrant worker’s rice bowl can be broken.

When we think of generational legacies and what we inherit from those who come before us, we often think of items bequeathed through wills or a bloodline, or the pride and wearability of a last name. But this is not the case for many poor, working class individuals who come to Singapore in an attempt to break intergenerational shackles of poverty and debt. In listening to Bhing, Maw Lwin, and the other domestic workers we have met, we have come to realise that though each life and situation is unique and different, domestic workers are connected via an inheritance far more insidious and damning: that of global racial capitalism and indentured servitude. Most, if not all, domestic workers who speak about internalising the pain and anger that is felt upon reading of a fellow worker’s death or abuse are themselves only one or two conditions away from a similar fate. 

Some countries have tried to interrupt these legacies. Over the course of 2014-2016, Myanmar imposed bans on Burmese women working as helpers in Singapore, citing ill-treatment and abuse as the main reasons³. In 2001, Indonesia imposed a temporary ban on Indonesian domestic workers coming into Singapore due to the high number of accidental deaths since 1999⁴. Indonesian migrant workers' groups have also previously protested against capital punishment deaths. They have called for greater investigation into abuses and working conditions that have contributed to or been responsible for these deaths and crimes⁵. However, for as long as these countries have a GDP that depends greatly on remittances from their citizens that work abroad, many of these bans end up short-lived and counterproductive. According to the Philippine Central Bank, Filipinos working overseas sent home a record $31.4 billion cash remittances in 2021, which was integral to helping the Philippines recover economically from the pandemic. Singapore is the second largest source of remittances after the US.  

We have met with and spoken to numerous domestic workers whose mothers, daughters, sisters, and other members of family are in the same vocation. This is not necessarily due to choice or any kind of social & economic mobility that is promised or possible through domestic work; instead, the sort of ‘pre-destiny’ that awaits many women in Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia, Myanmar, and the Philippines has more to do with economies of scale and how these countries make up their Gross Domestic Product (GDP). 

To completely abolish domestic work as an occupation is, of course, not possible. But countries like Singapore must reckon with how dependent the social and economic fabric of our nation is on the labour of these often underpaid and overworked women. 

Traumatic Legacies of Work