The health authorities have appealed to all families employing domestic helpers to make arrangements to allow them to stay overnight at their employers’ homes, or, alternatively, to find a place for them to stay in an independent room to avoid direct contact with other people in a domestic setting.
The appeal came from the coordinator at the local Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Leong Iek Hou, during yesterday’s press briefing from the Novel Coronavirus Response and Coordination Center.
“We urge employers with domestic helpers to request them to stay in and make arrangements for that. There is a high risk associated with domestic helpers becoming infected and then passing on the virus to the families they are working for, namely to children and to elderly [residents],” Leong said.
She added that in the alternative, employers should also consider finding a lodging place for these workers “that is not shared.”
When questioned on the topic, Leong explained that domestic workers who live outside their employer’s home usually live in places with a “very high concentration of people and that are lacking [amenities], which all contribute to the easy spread of contagion,” she remarked.
She gave the example of the case of the groups of Burmese workers who were part of the first group of infected people in this outbreak. Epidemiological investigation revealed that one apartment was being shared among a total of 14 people.
Domestic workers frustrated over appeal
Such an appeal had almost immediate feedback on social media platforms, with hundreds of people expressing dissatisfaction with such a request, namely foreign domestic workers.
These workers took to the social media platforms of several local media outlets, expressing discontent with the idea, which they claim to be impractical.
One of the opinions expressed is that the majority of the homes of the families they work at do not have any spare rooms where they can stay, as well as the fact that even if there was a way to stay with the employers, they would still need to continue to go out of the house often to go to the market, supermarket and for other job-related duties.
“It will be complicated to stay in an employer’s house without a decent place for the helper,” said one.
“It’s the employers that always leave the house and play mahjong with their friends,” said another.
Some expressed that such an idea would jeopardize the little freedom they have left, fearing that they would be put to work around the clock and without necessary rest time.
According to the detailed information provided by the center on Tuesday, from the total of almost 1,000 positive cases detected in the community starting on June 18, the large majority (81.4%) were locals or people from the mainland, while among the other nationalities, the larger numbers found included 57 Filipinos (6%), followed by Nepalese (5.5%), Burmese (3.3%), Vietnamese (1.8%), and Indonesians (1.17%), with the residual figure, below 1%, referring to all other nationalities.
