Indonesian Maids Undergoing Four Skill-Training To Get US$230 A Month

By Ahmad Fuad Yahya JAKARTA, March 16 (Bernama) -- The first batch of 106 Indonesian maids bound for Malaysia are undergoing four skill-training courses for 21 days starting today and they will be paid at least RM700 (nearly US$230) a month. This was concluded at the Malaysia-Indonesian Joint Task Force for Deployment, Placement and Protection of Indonesian Maids' meeting today, said Director-General of Indonesia's Labour Placement Development Dr Reyna Usman. He said the task force concluded that the maids would be employed to do only one of the four household tasks for which they were being trained for -- cooks, baby sitters, caretakers of elderly people or housekeepers. "If a maid is employed as a cook, she will only be tasked with chores related to cooking and will not be doing any other duties such as babysitting or washing clothes," he said after attending the task force's meeting at the Indonesian Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration here. Reyna said that the deal concluded by the joint task force was expected to prevent recurrence of problems affecting maids and employers. "If all this while maids were not professional as they have to do all sort of duties, causing their employers to get angry, now their skills will be tailored to their jobs," he added. Indonesia will eventually send between 4,000 and 5,000 skilled maids a month to Malaysia, he said, adding most of them were currently being trained for specific skills in Surabaya, East Java and Bekasi, West Java. He said during initial stages, the maids would be trained by 12 of 176 Indonesian employment agencies while their placement with employers would be taken care of by five of 221 employment agencies in Malaysia. The deployment of maids from Indonesia was resumed after the Indonesian government withdrew its moratorium on sending maids to Malaysia on Dec 1, 2011. Indonesia imposed a freeze on the supply of Indonesian maids to Malaysia on June 26, 2009 following reports of cases of abuse by employers. -- BERNAMA