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| FDHs are made to pay much higher agency fees now, says the Union |
A group of foreign domestic helpers has called on the government to crack down on employment agencies that have been charging them illegal fees, and penalize employers who force them to clean windows in violation of their contracts.
According to the Hong
Kong Federation of Asian Domestic Workers Unions, the amount of fees charged by
agencies to their members who are mostly Indonesians surged by 56 percent in
the past year and a half, to about $19,000 per worker.
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The amount was only about 12,000 in 2021, said the union, which also claimed that some of the FDHs even had their personal documents confiscated by the agencies.
They said it was
useless to file complaints with the Employment Agencies Administration as it
takes them a long time to act on a case. For example, they said that a case
they filed in 2017 has yet to be resolved to this day.
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Separately, a member
of the Union, Jec Sernando, called on the government to prosecute employers who
compel FDHs to clean windows despite a prohibition against this in the standard
employment contract.
Sernando said a
Filipina worker who fell to her death while cleaning windows is the sister of
her friend, and lamented that the employer was not held to account for this.
“We want it (the prohibition)
to be legislated in order for us to be more protected,” said Sernando.
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The union also urged
Immigration to be more lenient in assessing whether a FDH whose contract is
prematurely terminated could be allowed to remain in Hong Kong while processing
a new work contract.
In most termination
cases, the helper is a victim of abuse, so punishing them twice by sending them
home could lead to more workers tolerating ill-treatment just so they can keep
their jobs, said the union.
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