Surprises about Filipino Domestic Helpers in Hong Kong

It is widely believed that a maid is someone who belongs to that class of society which faces life firmly attached to the base of the socio-economic pyramid.  But that is not always the case.  In the Philippines, several women are rushing to get their pass port in the office of the Department of Foreign Affairs in order to apply for a job overseas.  The best place in fact is Hong Kong which is known as a very friendly place to apply as a domestic helper. 

People gasp with amazement when you mention the number of Filipino Domestic Helpers in Hong Kong.  There are more than one hundred thousand Filipino domestic helpers in Hong Kong.  But people would be more shocked if they learn that many of these Filipino domestic helpers are graduates from reputable universities and more surprisingly, a number of them come from upper class families in the Philippines.  For most of us, our image of the domestic help is of a group of women abused, besieged by problems at home, underpaid, underfed and forced by poverty to enter a life of semi-slavery abroad.

In the late 1980’s, Filipino women started flocking to the territory of Hong Kong in large numbers.  Hong Kong is considered the first choice of the Filipinos because it is maid-friendly where salaries are high and most of all where if you get into trouble, you can get justice without having to pay for it.  It helps too that the Filipinos can work there without fear of being hanged or beheaded.

Filipino domestic helpers are high profile in Central, Hong Kong, particularly on a Sunday and holidays.  They take over the streets, the parks; you will find them tucked under bridges and overpasses, singing, dancing, and conducting prayer services with a tiny PA system and a guitar.  Watch them at play and as they pray.  These women enjoy the best of both worlds you think.

And as they are enjoying themselves, many locals go around with long faces, envying the maids; their simplicity and the way they have appropriated to themselves the city’s central plaza.  The scenes they create in Hong Kong reflect the Filipino tradition of closeness, oneness and comradeship.  Apart from this, the endless gossip that forms an integral part of Filipinos’ everyday life is carried on with the utmost vigor.

A few minutes with the Filipinos in Central, Hong Kong brings the listener an amazing amount of information of the widest variety and most doubtful veracity.  Someone from the far south in the Philippines shares her experience with lass from the northern most part of the island.  It all makes for exciting moments.

While some bring up-to-the-minute news from the barrio (village in the countryside) to anybody who cares to listen, others have better things to tell about their companions.  Here’s a midwife who came out no. 7 in the nation’s Midwifery Board Examination.  In a far corner of Statue Square, Hong Kong, five pretty ladies are perched on a beautifully woven mat spread on the pavement.  They meet here every Sunday-off and holiday, killing time, planning their future and talking about the economic crisis and other adversities that daily hit the Philippines.  Two of these ladies are nurses, two business course graduates and one is a teacher.

There’s a cum laude from a prestigious Manila University.  Over there, a Certified Accountant (CPA), a licensed Engineer, a registered nurse, a Dentist, a journalism graduate, a mass communications graduate, a school principal, a lady from a well-off family.

Why would these ladies prefer a servant’s job to an air-conditioned office, a sterilized hospital or a cozy classroom in their own country?

One of the ladies, garbed in a blue dress, is a nurse.  You can easily imagine her in a hospital, busy with patients in her white uniform.  She applied as a domestic helper in Hong Kong after a six months volunteer nurse job and cannot find a job.  She plans to apply for a job in Canada after her contract in Hong Kong.

Dores, a CPA went to Hong Kong because when she worked in one of the travel agencies in the Philippines, her salary was not even enough to feed her family.  She was able to cope with her domestic help job.  But after two years she went home and never went abroad again.

May Garcia who is a graduate of journalism said that she just wanted to stand on her own and not depend on her parents for support.  She was under employed in the Philippines before she applied for a domestic help job in Hong Kong.

While most Filipinos go to Hong Kong for the money, there are others who just want to have fun.  In the Philippines, traveling abroad could only be afforded by the rich families and those who are exposed to the outside world.  Rich families from the remote places still lack the courage to go overseas so even the rich farmers in a faraway village cannot travel abroad.

A young med-tech graduate who refused to be named comes from a well-to-do family in the Philippines.  Her family owns vast stretches of agricultural land.  She lives in a big, comfortable house with maids but she applied as a domestic helper in Hong Kong.  Her only reason for going to Hong Kong was to be with her friends who invited her to join them and have fun.  And yes, she is enjoying and having fun.

A doctor’s daughter heard that Hong Kong is a fun place to work so she applied for domestic help job in Hong Kong.  She found out that it was not fun at all so after a month of crying and wishing to go home, she was finally released by her Chinese employer and went home to enjoy the comfort of her home and the services of her own maid.

There was this young woman who went to Hong Kong to work as a domestic helper.  Would you believe she was terminated by her employer because her family is richer than her employer?

When Melba’s employer planned to have a holiday in the Philippines, she offered their house for her employers to stay instead of checking in a hotel.  Melba’s employer found out that Melba belongs to a well-off family with a good business and she didn’t need to apply as a domestic helper abroad but Melba’s reason was to be independent.  Back to Hong Kong, Melba’s employer was forced to terminate her because they didn’t have the heart to treat her as a maid anymore.