Today-July 12
The Manpower Ministry (MOM) said it detected about six underage foreign domestic workers per 10,000 such workers in Singapore from 2018 to 2022. While the number of maids working in Singapore who are found to be underage by authorities is relatively low, maid agencies said they encounter such cases “relatively often” at the interview stage. Agencies said they employ various checks, including conducting rigorous interviews, looking out for photoshopped documents and even instituting their own height and weight requirement. Recently a teenage maid was sentenced to life imprisonment instead of death for murder after a bone-age test found she was 17 and not 23, as she had declared. Foreign domestic worker non-governmental organization HOME said that underage helpers are told by their agents to lie about their ages and keep up the pretense even when questioned. Asking “tricky questions”, setting a minimum height and weight requirement, and checking if photographs have been doctored are among the strategies maid agencies are using to sieve out underage foreign domestic workers who attempt to gain entry to work in Singapore. While the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said it has seen a marked decrease in the number of underage maids detected in the last three years, after initial spikes in 2018 and 2019, it still detected around six underage foreign domestic workers per 10,000 such workers in Singapore from 2018 to 2022. While the number of maids working in Singapore who are found to be underage by authorities is relatively low, maid agencies said they encounter such cases “relatively often” at the interview stage, when the applicants are still in their home countries. And despite their checks, some underage applicants do slip through the cracks. Read more at: https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/maid-agencies-find-various-ways-sieve-out-underage-candidates-even-mom-sees-fewer-cases-2209791
