Hong Kong has been slowing down since last summer’s anti-government protests, and the current haunting spectre of the Novid Coronavirus continues to lurk around every corner, emptying offices and restaurants in the centre of town; closing churches and community venues; cancelling public gatherings of any sort. People who can work from home do and such a pall of sadness has descended over this previously shiny and bustling city. Remembering SARS, Hongkongers have taken to mask-wearing and frequent hand washing: our public facilities are well geared towards a shared community effort to try and protect ourselves and each other. Nevertheless, it’s easier to stay at home in a semi-siege mentality than venture out and expose yourself to whatever has fallen off the person-before-the-person-before-you. It was almost, almost, a relief to have to cancel our Japan skiing holiday yesterday. At least these bugs are our bugs.
We are now in recession, however, and of course this has a disproportionate impact on the more vulnerable residents here, including the Foreign Domestic Helpers (FDH) usually from Indonesia or the Phillipines like our own MsJ. Helpers remit the income from their work here to support their families in their own countries, and keep little for themselves. Their lives are precarious. Although employment agency and visa fees in Hong Kong are more expensive than elsewhere, and incomes are lower here than in, say, Mainland China, positions in Hong Kong are sought-after because we have minimum basic rights and standards. There is a minimum wage and holiday allowance, and employers must provide food or an allowance for food.
Unfortunately abuse of these standards is common. An employer who elects not to pay their helper a food allowance requires their helper to share their food. Helpers come last in the pecking order and are often left with precious little to eat. Living space is ridiculously expensive here and a helper’s “room” is often a small pantry cupboard off the kitchen. It’s quite common for a helper to sleep with the children or elder parents for whom they care, or have no individual space at all. This is why they often spend their statutory weekly day off socialising on the raised walkways or pavements in town: their employers want them out of the house and they have nowhere to call their own space. As I’ve explained previously, this is not necessarily a sad time. Sunday walkways in town are filled with high volume chatter; videoke, impromptu dance troupes and picnics. They make the most of a bad situation.
If, however, a helper’s family is in semi-self-isolation against the Virus, as now, and they treat them as a chattel without their own agency, life can become intolerable for a domestic helper. A family might refuse to let them out to socialise freely on their day off and, having no space of their own, they are obliged to share the space with their family and therefore to work the extra day. Our friend Wilma* knows of two helpers whose contracts were terminated on the spot because they had the temerity to go out on their day off or violated a new curfew by a few minutes or other such pretext.
If employers work from home they often find that they no longer need a helper for childcare. Schools are closed so there is no longer a school run; working often fewer hours means that domestic helpers become unaffordable. Expatriate employers are finding the situation difficult to tolerate and, with small children it’s difficult to ride out the effect of their loss of education and friendships, so they are moving elsewhere. There is no social safety net here. If a helper is “terminated” they have to pack up and go right away. They lose their home with their job and are reliant on their social network or their church to provide a bed for the night. The rainy season is on its way and sleeping outside is not an option. Once terminated they have 14 days to find another position and if they do not they will lose their visa and must return to their home country. Now, for all the above reasons, employment is no longer easy to find.
The situation is further exacerbated by quarantine rules in home countries. In the Phillipines, for example, helpers from Hong Kong must undergo home-quarantine for 14 days. Some more unsympathetic employers will not tolerate this, and we’ve heard of people being terminated – how dramatic and final that term is – while they were away visiting ill relatives. No job, no income and a visa for 14 days only, and they have to start from the beginning.
The Hong Kong Government recently announced that it would be giving out HKD 10,000 (about £1,000) to longstanding residents. Though this, for some reason, extends to HK citizens who don’t actually live here, it’s not for newbies like us because, it is said, that would have meant extending it to the FDHs. One of the articles up there states that FDHs contribute around USD 12.6 bn to the Hong Kong economy. Their work enables women to pursue careers here in the knowledge that their children and elders are being fed and cared for. Their loss is not yet fully appreciated.
*Not her real name