Local maid agencies turn to Myanmar, Cambodia after Philippines ban

Maid recruitment agencies in Singapore have started turning to new sources of domestic workers like Myanmar and Cambodia.

This follows the decision of the Manila-based Association of Licensed Recruitment Agencies to Singapore (ALRAS) to stop deploying Filipino domestic workers to Singapore from September 2 this year.

Maid agencies in Singapore said the Philippine authorities expect employers and not the maids to fork out the placement fees.

The placement fees are for the processing of documents needed before the domestic worker can be sent to Singapore.

However, the agencies said not all employers are willing to pay the fees, resulting in a shortage of maids from the Philippines.



They said Filipino maids may also complain to their authorities if the fees were deducted from their salary.

This has resulted in more maids from Myanmar and Cambodia arriving in Singapore after undergoing training at home.

Maids from Myanmar started coming to Singapore two years ago.

In terms of countries with the most maids in Singapore, Myanmar is in third place, behind Indonesia and the Philippines.

Winnie Wang from Advance Link International Pte Ltd, said: "Myanmar maids -- you can say they are a group of people who are very decent. They are not much influenced by the social media, (with) less using handphones, Facebook, YouTube -- they just work, they are very hardworking.

"Their English still need to be polished, we have to train them overseas first before they can come in and adapt to Singapore life."

Cambodian maids have started arriving in Singapore under a Manpower Ministry pilot scheme. Six local maid agencies have been picked to participate in the two-year scheme and are allowed to bring in a total of 400 maids from Cambodia by the end of this year.