Filipina Domestic Workers Losing Out to Indonesians in HK Job Market

Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong relax during their day off

From the Inquirer:

MANILA, Philippines -- The number of Filipino domestic helpers entering Hong Kong has dropped sharply in the past five years as Indonesians are beginning to challenge the Filipinos’ domination of this job market in the former British colony.

“Data from the Hong Kong immigration office show that fewer Filipinos have been working in the former Crown Colony as Indonesian domestic helpers are taking over their territory,” said recruitment consultant Emmanuel Geslani Friday.

Geslani said that as of October 2007, 123,000 of the 250,000 foreign domestic helpers working in Hong Kong were Filipinos. Indonesians comprised 115,000 while Thais, Nepalese, Sri Lankans and other nationalities made up the rest.

“Many Hong Kong employers prefer the Indonesians who are more subservient and allow themselves to be underpaid,” Geslani said. He said Indonesians agree to work every day of the week unlike Filipinos who always want to have a day off.

Geslani said the Philippine government’s policy of raising the monthly salary rate of Filipino domestic helpers and requiring that they undergo language and skills training before their deployment has made the situation worse.

Meanwhile, a number of Hong Kong recruitment agencies are complaining against the allegedly inconsistent and selective application of the processing rules by a Philippine labor official there, Geslani said.

*A few points of interest in this article. For starters, it is admirable that the Philippine government has pursued efforts to improve the skills of and demand higher wages for its domestic workers. Unfortunately, as the article mentions, the domestic help industry, at least in Hong Kong, values cost over anything else.

Therefore, even as Filipina domestic workers now have government policies to raise their pay and skill level, they find themselves losing in the race for the cheapest taker to Indonesians who, as the recruitment consultant so graciously put it, are in a nut shell willing to work more for less and are more tolerant of abuse than their Filipina counterparts.

In international labor migration, a country is exporting its citizens to provide added value to a foreign economy. In an industry like domestic work, however, that does not prize added value as much as it does overhead, this logic does not apply and leaves domestic workers from the Philippines or any country vulnerable to low pay, no time off, and sexual, physical and mental abuse. The domestic help industry is a race to the bottom, not a race to the top.

With higher required monthly salaries, fewer Filipinas will find employment in domestic work abroad, which ultimately hurts the economy that has become over reliant on migrant earnings sent home and trickles down to the families that generally use these earnings to cover the cost of food, education and health care.

This article truly displays the need for reform in the domestic worker industry. Because of the economic quagmire faced by countries like the Philippines (if they increase monthly wages for domestic workers they decrease demand for their domestic workers, if they let market forces prevail and allow lower salaries they support an industry rife with abuse and little regulation), I think the responsibility to protect domestic workers from abuse, including human trafficking, ultimately falls in the lap of the destination countries like Hong Kong who are in a position to institute industry standards and regulation as well as provide legal and social service resources to workers who are being abused.

What do you all think? What can source countries and destination countries do to reform the domestic help industry and other low pay, largely unregulated service sector industries that attract migrants?

Filipinas Tried for Trafficking Compatriots in Hong Kong

From the Inquirer:

12/3/07 HONG KONG -- The trial of two Filipino women in what government officials said was a “landmark” human trafficking case began here on Monday.

Jennifer B. Nicdao, 27, and Angelita D. Amparado, 39 were charged at the District Court with trafficking in persons and aiding and abetting the breach of condition of stay after they allegedly brought to Hong Kong, last July, five Filipinas who ended up working as prostitutes in the city’s red light district in Wan Chai.

Government prosecutor Edward Le Breton Laskey said the two women were the first Filipino women charged with human trafficking outside the Philippines. However, the accused pleaded not guilty to the charges and their trial is expected to last until Thursday.

“This is the first case that Filipinas were prosecuted outside the Philippines in relation to trafficking of people. This has not happened in Singapore or the Middle East,” said Laskey during a break in Monday’s hearing.

“I am told that officials in the Philippines, including an adviser to the President, are very interested in this case,” he added.

Laskey said that he had handled cases of Thai or Chinese traffickers bringing into Hong Kong women for prostitution but this was the first time that he encountered the case of Filipino women being charged for the crime. “This is a landmark case because, if the authorities before charged only the trafficked women they arrested, this time, they’re going after the traffickers themselves,” said Vice-Consul Val Roque, head of the Assistance of Nationals section of the Philippine Consulate.

The five complainants in the case initially sought the help of the Philippine Consulate before going to the police. The police then raided several bars in Wan Chai on August 4 and invited for questioning at least 35 Filipino women, including Nicdao and Amparado.

According to Laskey, a certain Loida approached the first two victims in June and offered them work in Hong Kong.

Loida then introduced the women to Amparado, who allegedly told them that they would work as entertainers in a club, and this could include providing sexual services to customers, so that they could later pay the P60,000 for their plane ticket and their hotel accommodation.

According to one of the victims, the “loan” of P60,000 had to be repaid within three months after they arrived in Hong Kong.

There was supposed to be a written contract and Amparado allegedly even threatened one of the victims that she could end up in jail if she failed to pay up.

“(Amparado) told her that she could earn money by drinking with customers but if she wanted to earn more money and repay the loan quickly, then she should have sex with customers,” Laskey said.

The women earned their keep by getting commissions from the drinks their customers bought at the bar or by walking the streets to look for customers who would pay for sex.

And the outcome...

From GMA News:

12/20/07 HONG KONG - After a 10-day trial, a district court judge on Friday sentenced to three years in prison two Filipina women charged with trafficking persons into Hong Kong for the purpose of prostitution.

Jennifer N. Balibat or Nicki, 28, was seen crying beside a stoic-faced Angelita David, 40, as Judge Susanna D'Almada Remedios read out her verdict before sentencing them. David, who was referred to in court as Ampy, only broke down in tears after the judge finished and left the courtroom.



The two also received three months each for five counts of aiding and abetting their five Filipina victims, aged between 24 to 39 years old, to work here without valid employment visas, but all sentences will run concurrently.

Vice Consul Val Roque, who heads the Assistance to Nationals section of the Philippine Consulate, welcomed the verdict, saying it will serve as a deterrence to those who traffic Filipinas into Hong Kong.

Follow-up to a comment

A comment was posted by anonymous to my story on the Greek sex trafficking ring that was busted with the following article:

"Sex Trafficking Worker May Be Back With Traffickers"

The article discusses a trafficking victim from China who was brought to the UK under the guise of paying off a debt she owed on a loan to cover her parent's medical expenses. Essentially, she was forced to work without pay, as the debt and interest rate became insurmountable. After being rescued by the police, and the story made headlines in the local area, the victim became fearful for her family's life in China and fled. The police are unsure where she is.

Following the interviews the investigators placed her into safe accommodation. She would inevitably have had to go through a number of immigration checks and more lengthy interviews before eventually being flown home.

Det Con Jones believes the possible delay made Shirley take drastic action.

She said: "She knew she still had the debt to pay off. She knew the raid had been disclosed in the local papers and feared the man who collected the money would read it. She was fearful word would get back to Hong Kong and feared what would happen to her parents."To her, that threat was very real. She was desperate."

"While the victim wasn't shackled or kept in chains she told us her passport was taken from her and she was threatened not to leave. She was made fully aware that they knew exactly where her elderly parents lived. She told us: 'you cannot trust the Chinese police to help. They are not like you'."

"Her number one priority was her parents. There was no other family to care for them, only her. She would rather go back to Hong Kong and face the guy there, face that punishment than it be imposed on her parents."

It is thought Shirley fled the safe accommodation just hours later and disappeared.

Investigators are unable to say where she is now, or whether she made it back to her parents.There is even a concern she may have been recaptured by the traffickers. Reports have found trafficked women who escape the clutches of their pimps are often tracked down, often at ports or airports, and threatened back into the trade.

I thought the headline was pretty misleading. When I saw it at first, I thought the article was accusatory that after the help she received, she turned around and went right back to the trade. This story, to me, highlights two important points.

1.) The treatment of victims is a complicated process and just because a victim is out of the immediate situation does not mean they feel safe nor are they completely out of the grasps of their traffickers. Just because the trafficker was caught in the country of destination does not mean those in the country of origin will not try to silence their victims or their families.

2.) The responsibility of the media to be careful about how they report trafficking cases. Due to the multiple layers of running a trafficking ring, breaking up one part of it does not ensure the rest of the organization will not threaten the victim. In Ukraine, some of the organizations I work with even do training for the media on how to provide victim-sensitive reporting on human trafficking. There were many problems with reports that blamed the victim, gave specific names, etc. All of which either re-traumatized the victim or put him/her back in harms way.

Now with all that said, there are cases where victims end up returning to their traffickers and pimps. Either they feel to threatened to continue to talk to the police, or their trafficker has made direct threats to his or her family, or the abuse they suffered puts them in a position that they feel compelled to return to their abuser. It could be they fear returning to their own country and community, either due to the humiliation they will suffer or knowing the economic situation hasn't changed. The situations all need to be considered when providing aid to a victim in order to build the most effective services possible. It also needs to be considered by the governments who want to stop this problem as far as creating effective criminal code and social services.