Maid: Do we have to be at their mercy?

Oh! My dilemma with maid is never ending. In my previous post Maid oh Maid, I was singing praises for my new maid but that only lasted for 4 weeks. My maid has been threatening us about leaving and before she do that, we sent her back to the agent.

Well, maid problem in Malaysia is kind of serious, to me, because the Indonesian government is banning their people to come to Malaysia to work until both government settle on salary, day off and some other issues. To me, I'm fine to accommodate their request but how can the agent or the Indonesian government ensure us that we get what we pay for?

The past experience has made us more wary and selective of hiring the maid from Indonesia as they are know to lack the required skill and also language. So for me to pay the amount they asked, I have no problem but the maid has to be:

1) have some working experience first. There are occasion where the maid doesn't know how to light the gas stove, let alone operating the electrical appliances.

2) the maid must be able to understand some basic language of our Bahasa Malaysia. There was one maid that I had before who totally doesn't understand our language. It was like a duck talking to a chicken and the training is very exhaustive because everything has to be shown with example.

3) be truthful about their age. Since the age legal age is between 21 to 45, they have falsified their birth date to meet the requirement. My latest maid age was 47 years old, which we found out from her passport, and she told the agent and us that her age is only 37. I also have a maid, my best maid ever, who was 18years old but her passport listed her as 25 years old. To me this has shown their insincerity. Be truthful about it as we are going to trust you to take care of our kids.

4) ensure that the maid is responsible and would not disappear from the house leaving your kid at their mercy. I have read and also through some of my friends experience, there are maid who will just pack and leave, leaving your kids at home alone. These runaway maids normally has contact outside and believe me they just leave the house and stay with the construction workers.

5) they are certified to be fit - physically and mentally. There are maids who came here with some mental problem ending up they abuse the kids that they supposed to take care. Some of the employer resorted to install CCTV inside the house to monitor these abusive maid.

6) no practicing of black magic-some of the maid, ewwww they spit or add in their urine into your food or drink. Why they are doing that, only god knows but from what I heard is that they wanted the employer to listen to them and not the other way round where they are supposed to listen to the employer. They also bring with them some kind of charms where they charmed the employer. There were few cases where the husband lost interest with their wife and took the maid as his new wife. Their reason for bringing this charm with them is to make sure the employer will like them. Duh! If you are good, we will like you. No need to charm us.

So how can our government ensure that we get the right kind of maid to serve us? Do we have to be at their mercy? If they imposed conditions to us, shouldn't we have some condition too to ensure the safety of our kids and home when we are away at work?

Do you agree with me that we need some kind of assurance especially when it comes to the safety our little ones? Share with me your thoughts.