MAID ABUSE IN MALAYSIA: Tortured souls in our homes

// August 6th, 2010 // CYW BLOGS

MORE than 1,000 maids, mainly Indonesians, flee their cruel employers every year, migrant worker advocates reveal as more horror stories of “slave maids” emerged yesterday.

Some, including illegal domestic help and victims of human trafficking, remain runaways for fear of deportation.

Others seek protection from their respective embassies, in some cases, along with newborn babies — often the product of sexual assault.

The dreadful stories came from women at the shelter in the Indonesian Embassy on Jalan Tun Razak.

As of yesterday, 162 women were at the shelter which has a capacity to hold 75 people. Some stay for weeks, some for months.

Some of them have been beaten, raped or tortured with scalding water and nearly all have been treated like slaves and not paid for months or years of exhausting work.

Many still bear the scars, scalds and wounds inflicted on them.

Now they wait for their cases to be resolved via mediation with resentful former employers, or make their way painfully slowly through Malaysia’s court system, before they can return to their villages and towns.

Of the estimated 300,000 maids in Malaysia, Indonesians make up 90 per cent while Filipinas constitute
eight per cent.

Read more @ the Malay mail

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