This weekend we went to shop for a live-in maid. This is something I've been both dreading and looking forward to. The idea of affordable and convenient maid/nanny services was one of the original appeals of life in Singapore. But the idea of finding a suitable person to look after Lizzy and live in our home haunted me. It's like shopping for a new member of the family.
The process, it turns out, is quite simple. First you find one or more maid agencies - there are many, many to choose from and we just went with a colleague's recommendation. There are a few malls in the center of the city who have entire floors dedicated to housing such agencies, which broker contracts between migrant domestic workers - mostly Filipino, Indonesian, and Malay women between the ages of 18 and 50 years old - and, well, people like us. The one we used was in Far East Shopping Centre on Orchard Rd. You call the agency up and briefly describe your specific needs and they send you over some resumes to review. You book an appointment to interview the maids you're interested in. You agree on pay and some other logistics with the maid you choose. You sign a contract, the agency takes a finder's fee, and the maid moves in - most homes and condo apartments have an extra small bedroom and 1/2-3/4 bathroom suitable to house a maid near the kitchen. Oh, yeah, you also have to do an online course in how to be a maid's employer - covering your responsibilities toward the employee as mandated by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM). You also register the migrant worker with MOM, which begins levying a monthly tax from you for providing your maid a work permit. Finally, you have to get health insurance for your new employee and the agency helps you take care of that as well...
At least that's the technical description. The actual experience is a bit more colorful. One discomforting element in the process is that when you walk around the mall looking for your agency you pass through many other agencies and the place starts feeling like a market for legalized human trafficking. The migrant workers have to find a job within a few weeks of entering or losing their previous employment arrangement or else they face expulsion from the country. Many of them seem to be on their last day before their work permits run out, as they bring their suitcases to the agency where they sit the entire day waiting for their chance to get picked to be someone's maid. It is nerve-racking. The rules of engagement also made for an uncomfortable interviewing setup - chairs arranged just outside the agency's office in the middle of one of the mall's corridors, other maids-to-be and shoppers milling about.
We picked "Allen", who is from the Philippines but has been working as a maid for 20 years in Singapore, China and even, briefly, in the USA. The reason we liked her on paper was that she was older, educated, and had no children of her own for us to feel sad about... The reason we liked her in person was that she spoke very good English, she seemed quite intelligent (college-educated even), and Lizzy took a shine to her from the get-go.
We don't have a place for her to live with us yet, as we are in a small corporate apartment, so for now she commutes to work - and we're getting used to having the help.
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