"Dirty" Maid

[Sunny]

My dirty maid is more cash rich then me now

2 weeks ago Sun she tio 4d 1st prize, last Sun she tio consolation, today Wed she tio consolation again..

3 jackpot within a mtn.. Lol..

That's filthy rich lol

[Lala81]

Their GDP includes overseas remittances?

 

Their corruption level is one of the worse in SEA. It will hinder them immensely in any real economic growth. They don't have a large resource of natural wealth like Indonesia to power their economy.

 

SEA bing fu will still continue as it is...

 

They are not very different from Singapore. Their only true resource is their human resource. But just on a low to mid end scale and all working overseas.

 

Looks like more “humane’ rights there– giving them an allowance for food is correct. It takes the subjectivity of quantity offered in employers home.

 

Philippine’s economy doing well; Has it affected the number willing to come out and work as maids. Tough job, long hours.

 

 

• Yet this may change. After years of puttering along as the tiger economies in the region roared, the Philippines is finally showing some growl of its own. Between 2008 and 2012, GDP grew by an average of 4.7%, rising to 7.2% in 2013—higher than any East Asian country except China—despite being hit by one of the most powerful typhoons ever recorded.

 

 

[Camrysfa]

Their GDP includes overseas remittances?

 

Their corruption level is one of the worse in SEA. It will hinder them immensely in any real economic growth. They don't have a large resource of natural wealth like Indonesia to power their economy.

 

SEA bing fu will still continue as it is...

 

They are not very different from Singapore. Their only true resource is their human resource. But just on a low to mid end scale and all working overseas.

 

 

 

never mind lah, happy enough! lol

 

 

[lausai88]

My dirty maid is more cash rich then me now

2 weeks ago Sun she tio 4d 1st prize, last Sun she tio consolation, today Wed she tio consolation again..

3 jackpot within a mtn.. Lol..

 

Aiyoh, since she so lucky, you just tagged along lah

she tio you also tio

[Camrysfa]

LOL, the reverse maths of domestic workers in HK......, 2004!

 

 

Maids' $13b lift for HK
Ann Collier
September 27, 2004

Hong Kong's often-ignored and sometimes-maligned foreign domestic workforce contributes as much as HK$13 billion to Hong Kong's economy annually - more than 1 per cent of the city's gross national product, according to one estimate.

From academics to community organisers, no one knows precisely how much these workers, principally from the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand, do contribute. This, says Sajida Ally of the Asian Migrant Centre (AMC), is part of why their work is too often under-valued. Calculating the total economic worth of Hong Kong's 240,000 foreign domestic workers as part of the SAR's HK$1.25 trillion GNP is a complex formula that takes into account several different multiplier effects including the amount they earn, the kind of work they do and how much they spend locally, Ally says.

Each worker is believed to spend about HK$800 a month in the local economy, the AMC calculates, which generates more than HK$2.3 billion in direct consumption annually.

Thirty-six per cent of workers take care of children. This saves employers more than HK$2.1 billion yearly in private preschool fees, which are often more than HK$7,000 a month, the AMC estimates.

Ten per cent look after the elderly, sparing families more than HK$2.5 billion a year in nursing home costs.

In addition, all remit large percentages of their incomes to their home countries. In the Philippines, foreign remittances account for more revenue than electronics products, its largest export by dollar value, at US$6.5 billion (HK$50.7 billion) annually.

Foreign domestic workers have their own distinct impact on Hong Kong's economy, says Shirley Chan, programme officer at the Department of Home Affairs.

"Foreign helpers are people who will live in with the family and do all sorts of tasks, while local workers don't have that in mind at all,'' she says.

Filipino maids, in particular, seem to be the most rewarded of the city's domestic helpers.

They are fluent English speakers and highly educated: 62 per cent have some college background. They are consequently often paid more and treated with more respect than Indonesians and Thais, who sometimes work for as little as 50 per cent of the HK$3,270 minimum wage.

According to Dr Vivian Wee of the South East Asian Research Centre at Hong Kong University: "The government saves an unbelievable amount. They haven't invested in the care of the elderly or childcare.''

In 1999, only 37,341 places existed in childcare centres for 339,681 children under the age of four. As Wee sees it, domestic helpers could be contributing indirectly more than HK$28 billion a year just by freeing their female employers from having to stay home.

Over the past 30 years, with their children in foreign hands, this mass of women was a major factor contributing to two decades of record economic growth.

The human face of the domestic-helper economic engine is Lori Brunio, who three years after giving birth in 1990, left her baby daughter in the arms of a maid of her own in the Philippines and spent the next 11 years looking after someone else's children in Hong Kong.

"I never got to take care of my own baby,'' says Lori, a diminutive figure with long flowing black hair wrapped in a barette, almond-shaped brown eyes, and flawless hazel skin.

Over the years that she has been in Hong Kong, Lori Brunio's workload has included teaching English vocabulary to her employer's three children, supervising community playgroups, cleaning the house, shopping, cooking, and caring for her employer's invalid relative. In short, she freed up her bosses to earn their own living, running a lucrative small business together. Mutiply this hundreds of thousands of times and the picture emerges of numerous businesses underpinned by immigrant women.

Lori taught the children English so well that they won prizes in school, she boasts, before they could read or write Chinese characters.

Their mother and father usually returned from work at midnight, when she was expected to prepare them dinner. While they slept in, she woke the children and fed them breakfast.

Lori also looked after the family grandmother to whom she still refers to as "Lola'' - who eventually became chronically ill. Although Lola was sent to a nursing home, after several months she returned to Lori, who spoon-fed her her meals.

"When I remember my experience, it's with mixed emotions,'' she says. "I was very attached to the newborn. And I loved the children.

"But when you are used to being free and going anywhere you want and suddenly you don't see anyone but your employers and their family, you are very controlled.''

By the time her employers' youngest child had grown to become a rowdy primary school student, Lori Brunio was sacked. After two contracts, her Chinese family did not hire her back because, she says, she would by law have been entitled to more benefits.

Too often during hard times, she insists, domestic helpers have borne the brunt of the city's woes.

After the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the government cut domestic helpers' wages by 5 per cent, lowering the minimum salary from HK$3,860 to HK$3,670. Then, when the economy hit record unemployment and bankruptcies soared in February 2003, the government again reduced the minimum wage, to HK$3,270. It instituted a HK$400 monthly levy on each employer, tantamount to an 11 per cent tax.

"After the Sars crisis, we took the brunt of it,'' Brunio says.

Asian Migrant Centre's Ally says: "Every time there is a recession or crisis, you would associate anti-migrant policies much more with those periods of time.''

Others, however, praise the government for giving these women legal recourse if they are sexually abused and point to the strong network of non-governmental labour organisations.

Hong Kong's policy of a minimum wage is magnanimous compared to rights offered by other Asian countries, says Kitman Cheung, managing director of the Overseas Employment Centre. He says the the Indonesian government is hoping for even lower [maids'] salaries in Hong Kong so that more people will be motivated to employ workers from there.

Regardless, Ally argues, there are "dualistic and discriminatory'' government policies distinguishing foreign workers from expatriate professionals. Migrants are not eligible for SAR citizenship even after seven years in Hong Kong. If their contracts are terminated, they have only two weeks to find a new job before they are required to return to their home country. They are not allowed to bring their children or husbands to Hong Kong. They are not permitted to seek additional employment.

Despite her frustrations, Lori Brunio rests assured that some people recognise the true value of her economic contribution.

With a smile, she explains that she is now putting her oldest child through college in the Philippines; and, she will remain in Hong Kong for at least five more years until her youngest graduates. Asked if she will stay on here, she replies: "I don't think so. There is no place like your own home.''

Brunio is convinced that she and her fellow workers are making a big contribution: "If not for domestic workers, I think the economy would not be like this,'' she points to a skyscraper spiking the night sky. "Well, you can tell.''

[email protected]

 

__________________

[Dfx16]

 

Aiyoh, since she so lucky, you just tagged along lah

she tio you also tio

 

 

I also thought so but cannot lah wait sank boat since i never tio 4d for 2 yrs liao bo heng lah

Anyhow she gave me wife and son $100 each and bring my parent out for seafood when she tio the 1st prize