120 families with urgent caregiving needs get timely help from FDWs
Winner of Foreign Domestic Worker of the a Year 2016 Ms Pasgodayaye Gedara Indrani Fernando from Sri Lanka, with two of her employer's sons, Joshua Seah (in white shirt) and Justin Seah on Dec 11, 2016. Photo: Ooi Boon Keong/TODAY
SINGAPORE — A pilot scheme to help families with urgent caregiving needs to get appropriate help quickly has deployed foreign domestic workers to 120 households since it began in August.
And the number of employment agencies on board the Advance Placement Scheme has increased to 15, up from nine initially. Minister of State (Manpower) Sam Tan gave these updates yesterday at the 7th Foreign Domestic Workers Day celebration.
He said: “We hope that more foreign domestic workers will be successfully matched to employers at the upstream so that grievances and problems at the downstream can be mitigated and reduced.”
Under this year-long pilot — open to those who need urgent help to care for a child, elderly person or person with disability living at the same address as them — approved agencies can bring in workers with relevant caregiving skills before they have found an employer.
The usual practice is for employers to interview potential helpers while they are in their home countries through Skype or phone. Only after an employer decides to hire a helper will the process of bringing her in begin.
Association of Employment Agencies president K Jayaprema said the scheme has been well-received, and demand is likely to increase with an ageing population. But there are opportunity costs to bringing helpers in early, which might translate into higher recruitment fees — “a few hundred dollars” more — for employers, she said.
Yesterday, Foreign Domestic Worker Association for Social Support and Training president Seah Seng Choon also shared that his association is looking for a bigger place to locate its clubhouse for domestic helpers, despite having moved in October to a 7,000-sq-ft space in Bukit Merah.
“We’re already bursting at the seams and experiencing huge crowds, especially on Sundays ... We’re now planning ahead,” he said. The clubhouse has 5,000 members, a number that is expected to double by the end of next year.
On its wishlist is a venue that can accommodate up to 30 classrooms, a sizeable function hall and an open space for outdoor activities. “If we can secure a place like this, we intend to team up with appropriate service providers to run training courses and conduct orientation and induction programmes ... all under one roof,” he said.
