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Clash of views between Hong Kong employers and workers’ groups over ‘job-hopping’ by domestic helpers from overseas

  • Homemaker, who has had several domestic helpers quit early, says tougher regulations needed to help staff retention
  • Labour chief Chris Sun says employment agencies’ code of practice being revised in bid to deter job-hopping

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Domestic helpers gather in Central on their day off. Photo: Sam Tsang
Hong Kong homemaker Yan Chow raised her foreign domestic helper’s salary twice in a bid to retain her services for household duties and the care of two toddlers.

The 38-year-old said she was desperate after the helper twice said she wanted to quit after she started work last October.

Chow said she paid about HK$14,000 (US$1,786) in commission fees to an employment agency and for airline tickets for the Filipino helper to come to assist her family of four.

She lives with her husband, 41, who works in healthcare, and two sons, aged three and one.

Chow said the helper, in her 30s, first asked to quit at the end of last year, so she increased her monthly pay from HK$4,760 to HK$5,100 to persuade her to stay.

But she added the worker raised the prospect of resigning again just two months later on the grounds of a heavy workload and family affairs in the Philippines, so she gave the woman an increase to HK$5,300 per month.

Chow said before her present helper, two other domestic workers from the Philippines quit after about two months and claimed one of them deliberately did sloppy work to get sacked.

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