Call for Cambodian maids to have home management skills

KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Government should ensure Cambodian domestic maids are equipped with home management skills before they are permitted to work in the country.
Malaysian Maid Employers Association president Engku Ahmad Fauzi Engku Muhsein said this included meal preparation, house cleaning, laundry as well as looking after children and the elderly.
The move was to ensure the recruitment of quality domestic workers, thus preventing them from running away, he told Bernama here yesterday.
He was commenting on Malaysia's decision to allow more Cambodians to work in the country, especially as domestic maids during a bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak and his Cambodian counterpart, Hun Sen in Putrajaya Friday.
Engku Ahmad said the domestic maids from Cambodia should also undergo a basic course on the Malaysian culture and language to enable them to adapt to the demands of their employers.
Elaborating, he said the agreement which had been reached between the two countries was timely because about 10,000 domestic maids were needed to meet the current demand of employers.
However, he hoped the cost of employing domestic maids from Cambodia was on par with the quality of labour supplied and did not exceed the cost of hiring domestic maids from other countries.
Malaysian Association of Foreign Maid Agencies (PAPA) president Jeffrey Foo opined the move as appropriate as Cambodia was offering among the best domestic workers as compared to other source countries.
"Based on the experience of families who have hired maids from Cambodia, it is found they rarely cause any problem," he noted.
Foo said currently, there were only about 5,000 Cambodian domestic maids in the country as compared to 30,000 about four years ago.
He said PAPA had also been working with maid agencies in Cambodia to train its citizens to enable more of them to work as domestic maids in Malaysia. — Bernama