Monday, September 20, 2004
Of Conflict Resolution
Last week, a local newspaper in Singapore reported that a housemaid was jailed for four years after spiking her employer's milk with insecticide following repeated abuse over her work performance. A similar case occurred last year when a 19-year-old maid was jailed for 15 months for mixing glue in her employer's soybean drink, seen as revenge against her abusive employer. Such cases appear to be rampant and justice appears to have been served when the culprit housemaids were sent to jails.
In all these cases, seldom do the authorities or the communities go beyond the events to analyse the root causes of such evil acts. In a hectic society where people spent a lot of time at work in competitive office environment, they have little time to do the chorus of the homes. For those with affordable income, the solution is to employ housemaids to help out in the house. These maids tend to come from neighbouring countries when the cultures and habits may be different from the locals. So it is understandable that there are issues to work out and minor conflicts to be resolved.
I do believe that most employers do treat their maids kindly as humans and fellow helpers. However, there are some employers who view their maids more like cheap slaves than like fellow human being helpers. This could be due to their inability to relate to people of other cultures or their lack of experience to deal with the situation, or simply their higher than average expectation of the performance of their maids. As a result of the conflicts, and the inability to deal with these conflicts, these employers often adopt a dominant attitude and resort to abusive behaviour. It is just the human weakness of power domination, where the strong rules over the weak. This can be illustrated in a recent case in Malaysia, where it was reported that a housemaid was repeatedly abused and burned with hot iron, causing much public uproar. The poor and helpless house often have no other recourse except to take revenge and fall foul of the law.
I do not pretend there is a simple solution to these conflicts. However, community and authorities can always do more to put better social and legal system in place to protect the poor and helpless maids. More important, authority needs to raise public awareness of human values and that such cases can be prevented or minimised. This can be done through better moral education, counselling of employers before and after the employment of their maids, periodic monitoring of the working conditions, better community and social support and networking for the maids, and many other measures. Merely punishing the maids with the full force of the law for their wrong vengeance actions will not remove the root of this social evil.
In all these cases, seldom do the authorities or the communities go beyond the events to analyse the root causes of such evil acts. In a hectic society where people spent a lot of time at work in competitive office environment, they have little time to do the chorus of the homes. For those with affordable income, the solution is to employ housemaids to help out in the house. These maids tend to come from neighbouring countries when the cultures and habits may be different from the locals. So it is understandable that there are issues to work out and minor conflicts to be resolved.
I do believe that most employers do treat their maids kindly as humans and fellow helpers. However, there are some employers who view their maids more like cheap slaves than like fellow human being helpers. This could be due to their inability to relate to people of other cultures or their lack of experience to deal with the situation, or simply their higher than average expectation of the performance of their maids. As a result of the conflicts, and the inability to deal with these conflicts, these employers often adopt a dominant attitude and resort to abusive behaviour. It is just the human weakness of power domination, where the strong rules over the weak. This can be illustrated in a recent case in Malaysia, where it was reported that a housemaid was repeatedly abused and burned with hot iron, causing much public uproar. The poor and helpless house often have no other recourse except to take revenge and fall foul of the law.
I do not pretend there is a simple solution to these conflicts. However, community and authorities can always do more to put better social and legal system in place to protect the poor and helpless maids. More important, authority needs to raise public awareness of human values and that such cases can be prevented or minimised. This can be done through better moral education, counselling of employers before and after the employment of their maids, periodic monitoring of the working conditions, better community and social support and networking for the maids, and many other measures. Merely punishing the maids with the full force of the law for their wrong vengeance actions will not remove the root of this social evil.
