Abuse Me Not

Upon reading this news article, I pitied the plight of the Indonesian maids.

These maids left their homes and come to this faraway land to earn a living, with no kith and kin, depending solely on themselves on everything. They were mostly trained by agencies, each time giving their best, hoping that they could be employed as soon as possible. Sacrificing their family warmth back home, they came all the way here in attempt to earn a living to help their family financially. Some of them do not even earn the amount of money children get as allowance these days. In addition to their down situation, some of them even had to endure their employers’ abuse. How can they be so inhumane? After all, we are all human beings.

Abusing maids is such a disgraceful act. It is unbearable too! We are all human beings and all man has equal rights. Despite many of them (the maids) are from the unprivileged or the poor, we cannot order them around like some animal. In today’s day and date, maids are given better treatment but it still has room for improvement, given the many cases of abuse and death of maids by their employers. Even if maids made mistakes, employers should never hit or abuse them. They should direct and help the maids to adjust to their new environment hence being more effective and efficient thus less prone to mistakes.

There are increasingly a number of abuse cases over the years. According to the news article, although the Indonesia government has impose a ban of prohibiting women to go to Malaysia as domestic maids, there are still many workers seen regularly at the Jakarta airport. This shows that the government’s ban is being ignored or treated like a passing remark.

I feel that the Indonesian government should use more severe and strict laws to prevent employers from abusing their maids. The government can strengthen the punishment to a more serious and severe one towards abusive employers. Maids should also learned that they can seek for help and who to seek for help should they be ill-treated.

I believed no matter what reason, employers have no right and excuse to abuse their domestic helpers. We are all human beings and we should learn to respect and treat one another nicely. As the saying goes “treat others like how you want to be treated”. I hope the situation would not aggravate further and the world would be a better place each day.

Credits:
(News Source): The Straits Times Newspaper, 'World' section, 24 Nov 10

Done By: Kwek Wan Ling
Admin Number: 103503L