Indonesia's ‘one maid,one task’ is raw deal in the new deal!

M’sian side never given chance to object to ‘one maid, one task’ 

By P. ARUNA aruna@thestar.com.my

PETALING JAYA: Indonesian officials appeared to have decided on their own on the “one maid, one task” ruling at the meeting of the joint task force in Jakarta on Thursday.

“They just announced the ruling and did not ask the Malaysian side whether or not they agreed,” an Indonesian participant told The Star in a telephone interview.

“Dr Reyna Usman (the Indonesian Labour Placement Development director-general) made the announcement and the meeting then moved on to other matters,” said the participant who asked not to be identified.

The ruling had caused an uproar in Malaysia, with the associations for both agents and employers now wanting to know whether the Malaysian officials had agreed to it, and if so why.

Dr Reyna had said the fresh batch of Indonesian maids would be trained in four household chores cooking, babysitting, taking care of the elderly and housekeeping but each would perform only one of these tasks for her employer and be paid RM700 a month.

She added that the ruling was to prevent a recurrence of the problems affecting maids and employers.

The Association of Foreign Maid Agencies (Papa) acting president Jeffrey Foo said the officials, led by Labour Department director-general Datuk Sheikh Yahya Mohamed, should explain what transpired at the meeting.

“If our officials agreed to it (the ruling), they must explain it to us,” he said.

Malaysian Maid Employers' Association (Mama) president Engku Ahmad Fauzi Engku Muhsein concurred, saying: “There are many doubts that need to be cleared. We want to know what really happened at the meeting.”

None of the Malaysian officials present at the meeting have commented on the decision.

Sheikh Yahya could not be reached for comment.

Raw deal in this new deal
 
On The Beat By Wong Chun Wai

Malaysians are not amused with Indonesia’s latest condition on hiring of maids.

I HAVE only one Indonesian maid and come July, she would have worked with my family for seven years.

Yuli, who comes from Way Halom in Sumatra, is regarded as a family member. She eats the same food we eat. She goes on annual local holidays with us and her birthday is celebrated with a good dinner and cake. Occasionally, she goes to watch concerts with the family.

My wife insists that she gets to return to Indonesia during her break on Malaysia Airlines and arrangements are made at the airport so she would not be hassled by Indonesian Immigration officers and hustlers.

Yuli gets a say in most decisions involving the household and I have my lucky stars to thank, considering that many Malaysians have a horror story to tell about their maids.

She has picked up the English language, learnt how to cook some of my favourite Penang nyonya food, and she can even laugh at the Hokkien sitcoms on Astro.

But my sister-in-law has not been lucky. She has had two maids and both were a disaster.

The first was an Indonesian from Flores who spent most of her time in the living room in front of the TV rather than in the kitchen. Her addiction to instant noodles would have made her worthy of an academic study.

The second, a Cambodian, was worse. She put on weight within weeks of her employment after she discovered the magic of the refrigerator and oven.

But that wasn’t enough. She stole food, secretly storing them in a bag in her room. Apparently, she’s never heard of expiry dates.

Still, that was tolerable until she decided to go on a mutiny, snubbing directives and snapping back at her boss. Then she walked off and refused to come back.

Here’s the best part: the agency had the audacity to ask for her salary to be paid despite her absence without leave and work not rendered.

I won’t be surprised if she has been “recycled” and is now with another desperate Malaysian couple who needs a maid.

There’s another story. Lady boss asked the Cambodian maid why she had not prepared the husband’s breakfast as she was told.

The maid’s reply: “Madam, Sir is already big. Sir knows how to make breakfast. I no need.”

I swear this is not made up, but I am not sure if the maid has gone for counselling or if she has been sent back to Cambodia.

And here’s another one. There is a friend who installed CCTV at his home so he could monitor what’s happening there from his office. Lucky for him – he found out he had a psychopath on his hands when he saw his Indonesian maid regularly talking to her image in the mirror and rolling on the floor laughing hysterically.

She would burn so-called blessed papers, presumably jampi, and insist that his children consume them before they went to school. The final straw came when she asked my friend to post her “love letters” – addressed to President Suharto!

Again, we are not sure if she’s safely back and undergoing mental treatment in her home country or if she’s with another new Malaysian tuan. Hope someone tells her there’s now a new Indonesian president.

There may be stories of maids being abused and certainly Malaysians in their right mind would not tolerate such incidents. It gives our country a bad name and also leads to pressure from their countries to slow down the numbers coming in to Malaysia.

But there are also stories of Malaysian employers who suffer emotional and financial abuse from maids. These are less reported but that does not mean they are isolated cases or it’s simply because non-governmental organisations are not taking up cases of abused employers.

So, Malaysians are not amused when Indonesia tells us that their maids headed here will only perform one task and must be paid RM700 for that.

I believe Malaysian employers would not mind paying more, but not for less work. Pressing frustrated employers with such unreasonable demands is certainly going overboard.

It has been reported that the fresh batch of 106 Indonesian maids headed here would only carry out one task for their bosses. They would be trained to do four household chores – cooking, babysitting, taking care of the elderly, and housekeeping – but will perform only one of these tasks for their employers.

The report stated that the workers were undergoing four skills training courses over 21 days and must be paid RM700 a month by their Malaysian employers.

The Malaysian Maid Employers’ Association and Malaysian National Association of Employ­ment Agencies have rightly questioned the announcement. Come on, this one is surely a bad deal.

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Stranded Viet women get help

42 Viet women in a house — and surviving mainly on rice
The Star

GEORGE TOWN: Forty-two Vietna-mese women living together in a house here have allegedly been surviving mainly on rice for the past few months.

The women, aged between 30 and 50, are said to be unable to return to Vietnam as their visas have expired.

They have been staying in a semi-detached double-storey house in Jalan Tull for the past few months.
The house has four rooms and a toilet upstairs.

Help us get home: The Vietnamese women in tears while relating their plight to Koay at their home in Jalan Tull, George Town, Friday.

 There is also a living room, a small room, toilet and kitchen downstairs.

It is said that up to five women would sleep in a room while some had to sleep in the living room.

The women's plight came to light when their neighbours informed the authorities after finding the noise made by the women, especially at night, intolerable.

One of the women, known only as Hai, said most of them were jobless and could not send money back to their families.

“Some of us have been in Malaysia for a year and a half but our visas have expired,” she said.

She claimed that some of the women used to work as cleaners at a hospital and were paid RM50 a day but their wages were later reduced to RM25.

“In the end, we were not paid at all though we continued to work. Only a few of us are still working,” she said, adding that their agent was holding on to their passports.

When reporters visited the house, three women appeared sickly.

There were some fish, vegetables and eggs in the refrigerator.

Hai claimed that their agent would send 20kg of rice to them every three days.

She added that they would add salt to their rice for flavour.

“We have been calling the Vietnamese embassy every day, asking them to help us go home, but we are still waiting for a response,” she said.

She added that all they wanted now was to return home.

She alleged that they knew of 26 other Vietnamese and Nepalese foreign workers who were men, living in another house.

The women cried when relating their misfortune to Pulau Tikus assemblyman Koay Teng Hai who visited them yesterday.

Koay said he would contact the Vietnamese embassy as soon as possible.

“There are similar cases in Penang, such as in Paya Terubong.

“I will also contact the Immigration Department and the police,” he said.

 42 ‘stranded’ Viets get help

GEORGE TOWN: The 42 Vietnamese women “stranded” in a house here will be sent to a women's protection centre in Kuala Lumpur.

OCPD Asst Comm Gan Kong Meng said they had obtained an interim protection order from a magistrate's court here to send the women, aged between 31 and 50, to the centre.

He said the case was being investigated under Section 14 of the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act 2007.

ACP Gan said an initial investigation showed that the women had not been paid for two months, adding that police had gone to the house and taken a statement from Tran Thi Hai, 31, who used to work as a cleaner in a hospital.

Sad plight: Some of the Vietnamese women sobbing uncontrollably while eating rice and vegetables donated by Malaysians who went to their aid upon learning about their plight in the newspapers. — MUHAMAD SHAHRIL ROSLI / The Star

“We were told they have been on their own for about one month. They have to buy food and daily necessities using their own money.

“We have informed the Immigration Department, the Vietnamese Embassy and Interpol. We will complete investigations soon.”

Meanwhile, several caring Malaysians sent food items such as cooking oil, vegetables, beverages and rice to the house in Jalan Tull off Jalan Residency while some have shown interest in hiring the women as domestic maids.

Pulau Tikus assemblyman Koay Teng Hai said he had contacted the embassy, which was aware of the problem faced by the women.

“The embassy has contacted the Immigration Department and a meeting will be held tomorrow,” he said.
It was reported that the women survived on white rice for the past few months while their agent would send 20kg of rice every three months.

Meanwhile, 34 Nepalese and Vietnamese men, aged between 20 and 40, who are in the same situation as 42 Vietnamese women, would also be sent to a protection centre in Kuala Lumpur, said Koay.

He said they used to work as cleaners at Penang Hospital and claimed they had the same agent as the Vietnamese women.

State Immigration assistant director Mustaffa Kamal Hanaffi said investigations would be carried out to trace the agent responsible for the 76 Vietnamese and Nepalese men and women.

Foreign worker flow choked in Singapore

INSIGHT: DOWN SOUTH By SEAH CHIANG NEE

From July, manufacturing firms will see their quota of foreign workers reduced from 65% to 60%, while the quota in services will drop from 50% to 45%.



FOR the first time in years, Singapore is cutting back on the intake of foreign workers to placate widespread public resentment.

“In the next five years, we have decided to tier down our need for foreign workers,” declared the strategy’s architect, former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew.

It was a tacit admission that its ambitious immigration strategy had run into trouble among Singaporeans and needed to be cut back – at least temporarily.

Lee’s son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, added: “We should consolidate, slow down the pace. We can’t continue going like this and increasing our population 100,000 to 150,000 a year, indefinitely.

“And we should give Singaporeans time to adjust, and our society time to settle, and integrate better the new arrivals.”

He mentioned no time-span for the reduction, but Lee Senior spoke of five years, evidently to take into account the next general election due in 2016-17.

A strong anti-People’s Action Party vote could make the policy more uncertain. But if it performs well, the doors may be opened even wider, according to analysts.

This in effect means the next election will serve as a referendum on future immigration.

The cutback is as follows: From July, manufacturing firms will have their quota of foreign workers reduced from 65% to 60%, while the quota in services will drop from 50% to 45%.

This was announced by Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam in his recent Budget speech.

He also said that the dependency ratio ceiling for “S” Pass holders – mainly mid-level skilled foreigners – would also be reduced to 20% from 25%. This affects middle-class Singaporeans most of all.

“The number of foreign workers has risen 7.5% each year for the last two years and account for a third of the city-state’s work force,” Tharman told parliament.

“We have to reduce our dependence on foreign labour. It’s not sustainable. It will test the limits of our space and infrastructure. A continued rapid infusion of foreign workers will also inevitably affect the Singaporean character of our society.”

A number of foreigners here – especially permanent residents – were a little rattled by the move, particularly Indians and Filipinos.

One family of PRs contacted me to ask if I thought this was prelude to a reversal of policy or a start of worse things to come.

The government has said those who are already here would not be affected.

There are other reasons for the review. One is a feared economic decline ahead and an expected drop in employment chances.

Another is the sustained drop in productivity growth from 11% (in 2009) to 1% last year, partly blamed on the import of too many cheap, low-skilled workers.

During the past year, the authorities had already been tightening rejection rates. The rise in foreigners slowed from 4.8% to 4.1%, and PR growth also slowed. From 6% a year from 2005, it rose by only 1.5% this year.

Lee Kuan Yew, who had long been the staunchest champion of the immigration policy, appeared to have softened his stand a year ago.

He said then: “We’ve grown in the last five years by just importing labour. Now, the people feel uncomfortable, there are too many foreigners.

“Trains are overcrowded with foreigners, buses too, property prices have gone up because foreigners with permanent residence are buying into the market.”

Actually, Singapore’s attitude towards low-skilled foreign workers runs counter to that a generation ago when the manufacturing era and large economies like China and India were emerging.

Sensing a threat in the 70s and 80s as they could offer more and cheaper workers and land to foreign factories, Lee – then at the height of his leadership – ordered a restructure to move Singapore’s economy to higher skill levels.

By the late 1980s state leaders raised salaries and cost of operations for low-skilled manufacturers to operate in Singapore. The idea was to move them to nearby Batam, Malaysia and Thailand.

“We don’t want investors to come here to manufacture low-margin products like umbrellas, plastic and clogs,” one government economist said.

I remember as a newspaper editor I sat in on a briefing by Economic Development officials in Brussels who told Lee Kuan Yew that they were faced with several requests from European investors to relocate to Singapore.

These were medium-size operations, but Singapore could not meet their demand for Singapore workers.

“We can tell them to operate in one of our nearby hub cities in Malaysia or Indonesia to make use of their workers under Singapore supervision,” Lee suggested.

The officials replied: “No, Sir, they insist on Singapore workers; otherwise they would have set up business in other countries.”

The industrial revolution was still in full swing. But Lee saw the shortcoming in Singapore’s small size in manpower and land.

The solution was to move to high-skilled levels, especially in services. Tertiary education and job retraining went full swing.

At the time he was against the intake of too many unskilled foreigners.

In several briefings, he sniffed at Europe’s mass import of low-skilled workers from Asia and Africa, saying it is something Singapore will not emulate.

The rich Europeans were addicted to imported cheap labour to do “dirty jobs” that locals refused to do, a reliance long turned into a national addiction.

As a result, more and more unskilled foreigners were needed.

Today with the strong reliance on “cheap foreigners”, it is becoming a lot harder to turn back to the original strategy of high-skilled services by using trained Singaporeans.

Think business, think margins

ON YOUR OWN By TAN THIAM HOCK

An Innovation Competence Process Coming From Knowledge Management (Photo credit: Alex Osterwalder)

ABOUT 20 years ago, when Forbes started compiling a list of the richest Asian billionaires, many rumours spread. My favourite story involves a president M of a neighbouring country. He was known as the 10% president. Just make sure you budget a 10% margin for him if you want to participate in any infrastructure projects in his country.

After diligently amassing a tidy fortune over his long rule, president M was surprised when the new list from Forbes placed him a few places below another head of state from a neighbouring country. This head of state had only been in power for a few years so president M decided to make a state visit to learn the ultimate trade secret.

After a sumptuous dinner at the palace on a hill, the head of state led the president to the balcony with a great view. When asked for his secrets to such quick success, he asked the president, “Can you see that beautiful highway? And that long bridge across the river? And the power station next to it?”

Faced with a vast landscape of lush virgin forest and hills, the puzzled president said, “Sorry. There is nothing there but a forest in my view.” The beaming head of state explained patiently, “That's my trade secret. I only take 100% margin!”

No, I am not asking you to make a 100% margin. Because you can't. Unless you are a very powerful and corrupt politician or head of state. But it just shows that you will make money faster when your business enjoy high margins. Net profit is basically gross profit less expenses. The higher your gross profit (sales minus cost of goods), the faster you cover your expenses, the more you make as your sales increase. All because you have high gross margins.

No, I am not asking you to invest only in high margin business. If sales turnover is small, your net profit remains small. Sometimes high volume, low margin business provides a very high return on investment, like the Walmart hypermarket business. A 2% net profit on a turnover of US$400bil will net the shareholders a cool US$8bil (RM24bil) a year! Only Petronas makes more money than Walmart. And that's because the abundant oil and gas from the sea bed is free!

But for entrepreneur wannabes who need to start on a small scale, I always recommend high margin business opportunities. You are under less pressure to achieve high sales volume and you need less working capital. You just have to watch your expenses and cover your opportunity cost of being employed.

High margins can be created through innovation, brand perception, necessity and scarcity.

In my pre-university days, I worked for 3M as a sales promoter. 3M is well known for its innovative research and development programme of developing next generation products. These are products that are sold at premium prices and fetch at least 70% margins across their 5,000 product lines! Once copycats flood the market and reduce their product margins, they just discard the product line and launch newer and more innovative products at higher prices.

Then you have Apple products which is at a premium to its competitors and they fetch higher margins through a combination of technological innovation and higher brand perception. Microsoft has been selling their so-called software diskette at an average of US$200 when their cost of production is US$2 per diskette. Out of necessity, your business computers must be installed with their operating system and Office application software. No prizes for guessing the reasons why these two companies are the most profitable in the world.

Why must you pay two times more for Gillette blades versus other blades when a shave is just a shave? Why must your wife pay RM5,000 for a plastic monogram bag when a full calf leather bag cost a mere RM500? And will a RM1,000 jar of cream make you look 10 years younger? If you have innovative products, make sure you hire the best marketing minds to create a superior brand perception, raise the prices and reap the rewards.

With a growing world population and depleting natural resources, we have seen continuous price increases in oil, minerals and agricultural products. What used to be cyclical in demand and supply, where prices fluctuate in 10-year cycles, have now become a continuous increase in demand versus depleting supply.

Compared with massive overcapacity in manufacturing of almost any conceivable product from consumer goods to ships to cars; it is a no brainer where the high margin business will be in the foreseeable future.

For entrepreneur wannabes, you should develop a competitive business model where you can charge a higher price for your goods or services. Be creative. Build yourself a superior brand image. Make sure your services or your products are a necessity.

A “must have” by all concerned. Embrace high margin mentality when you evaluate business opportunities. Then go forth and multiply.

This advice is free. But if you make your millions, just remember to send me a cheque for 10% of your earnings. Lest you forget that I do not have to be a crooked politician to earn my clean 100% margin.

● The writer is an entrepreneur who hopes to share his experience and insights with readers who want to take that giant leap into business but are not sure if they should. Email him at thtan@alliancecosmetics.com 

Be Captain Of Your Destiny - Not Prisoner Of Wishful Thinking

It's hard to will a business into being. Anyone who doesn't understand this through intuition figures it out soon enough through experience.

To win, an entrepreneur needs the conviction to overcome inertia. People have gotten along just fine without whatever it is you hope to sell them. Fact is your early attempts to convince them otherwise will almost always fail, which means you need the tenacity to keep swinging until you connect with the market.

George Bernard Shaw famously observed that the reasonable man adapts to his circumstance, that only an unreasonable man would seek to adapt the outside world to his own needs. Progress depends on the unreasonable man, said Mr. Shaw. It's a quote I've always loved. It means that apparent failure is just another obstacle to be overcome by an individual with the will, and the character, to do so.

That's an attractive idea to an entrepreneur. But sometimes that attraction is fatal.

 

For every story of conviction overcoming a perceptual speed-bump, there are 10 of an entrepreneur who hung on too long after the point where the market responded with a resounding, “Meh.” The stronger your sales skills, the longer you'll tend to hold out past the “point of meh,” and the higher your opportunity costs will be versus investing in an offering with the potential to be pulled by the marketplace rather than pushed by the brute force of your sales and marketing prowess.

So how do you know? How do you tell the difference between a light at the end of the tunnel, and the oncoming train of market indifference?

Here are 5 questions that can help:

1. Is your quality of execution sufficient to take quality of execution off the table as a variable? Poor execution of the right strategy will most likely lead to failure, just as brilliant execution can hide the holes in a flawed strategy. So where are you on that scale? If you're happy with the quality of your execution, on balance, you need to look deeper for the source of the challenges in your business.

2. Do your customers understand your offering differently than your prospects? The world has a learning curve, and dealing with it is part of the entrepreneurial adventure. But does the perception of the people who've climbed that curve — your existing customers — really change in important ways from that of your further-out prospects? If the answer is no, you're seeing something your customer doesn't. And that usually means it doesn't exist.

3. Are others finding success in your space? This one is simple. Is someone in your space kicking butt? If so the competitive threat may be important, but so is the validation that you're chasing something which can be caught.

4. Will the larger context change in some way to smooth your path to success? m-Qube was the 800-lb gorilla in a non-existent industry for years before the US text messaging phenomenon took off. We kept our powder dry, and waited it out. Are you doing the same? If so agree on a tangible trigger and conserve your cash until you hit it. If not consider giving the money back, and changing over to a game you can actually win.

5. Is the source of your conviction what you need, or what actually is? I love Shark Tank, and in almost every episode some amateur tells the sharks that their idea will take off because they need it to. Cuban and Kevin typically bow out soon after that. The reason? Entrepreneurs motivated by an objective opportunity have a much better hit rate than those motivated by an internal psychosis, or an external requirement.

This last one breaks my heart, and I see it a lot. I get that you hate to disappoint your uncle Nunzio, or that you promised your spouse you'd make it work this time. But the fact is those things are irrelevant to the question of whether your idea will fly, and anyone willing to point that out to you is someone you can trust over the long run.

Don't be that person, folks. So much of the pain in life, over time, is caused by distance from the truth. And the same is true in business.

Ask these questions of yourself, and try hard to answer them honestly. If the news is bad and you deal with it like an adult, I promise you'll live to fight another day. If the same is true but you're a good enough salesperson to sell yourself eventually you're going to hit somebody else's wall, and create collateral damage you might otherwise have avoided.

There's a fine line between being the captain of your destiny, and the prisoner of your own wishful thinking. Use these questions to help sort out which side of it you're on, and please share what you learn with the rest of us here.

Source:  OnStartups,com