Singaporean arrested in the Philippines for illegal recruitment of maids

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http://www.todayonline.com/singapore/going-around-system-meet-demand-maids?singlepage=true

The issue of illegal recruiting was thrown into the spotlight when Singaporean Ms Yvonne Phua, 55, was arrested in the Philippines last Friday — along with a Filipino couple, Mr Michael and Ms Joy Abellar — for their alleged involvement in the illegal recruitment of maids for a Singapore employment agency. Ms Phua is accused of helping to train maids there despite not being licensed to do so — something she denies.

With maid agencies often under pressure from employers to make swift hires, it is not unheard of for some of them to turn to unlicensed recruiters in source countries, industry players say.

Although maid agencies need to be accredited by the Philippines Embassy in Singapore (a condition is that they have to partner with licensed recruiters in the Philippines) to bring helpers here, some go around the system to meet the demand, said agencies TODAY spoke to.

Agencies in both Singapore and the Philippines have to process documentation for domestic workers before they can enter the country.

This long process sometimes makes it difficult to meet the demand of employers who need domestic workers, some as soon as one week, forcing many agencies to turn to unlicensed recruiters.

Checks with eight maid agencies found that the average time it takes to recruit, train and process the documentation for domestic workers in the Philippines and Indonesia is about two months, before they finally arrive in Singapore. To beat the stiff competition in the industry, agencies would turn to illegal recruiters to meet employers’ demands.

The number of transfer maids, who are available for immediate hiring, is not enough to meet the demands in the market, he said. Other maid agencies have tried to circumvent this problem by recruiting maids from Myanmar.

Despite catering to a smaller pool of employers, Myanmar workers can be brought into Singapore within a few weeks as the country has not yet worked out an accreditation scheme.