Once found pregnant, migrant domestic workers will have their work passes terminated. Employers are also expected to report their helpers’ pregnancy. The programme Undercover Asia explores the consequences when workers are backed into a corner.
When Vinny* discovered she was pregnant, her husband hoped it was a girl. She hoped it was not true.As a migrant domestic worker in Singapore, being pregnant violated the conditions of her work permit, which would mean deportation and possibly a ban on working here again.“If the crops aren’t good, then we’d nothing to eat, to buy things. If you don’t have work, how you raise a baby?” said Vinny, who has two sons with her husband.
Vinny was conscious of the clock ticking — her vomiting, headaches and fatigue would give her away in no time. In the second month of her pregnancy, she came clean with her employer, who sent her home without reporting her pregnancy. The word on the street is the extracted foetus is shredded in a blender to cover up traces of the procedure, he added.
The drug, Misoprostol, otherwise known by its brand name, Cytotec, is typically prescribed to end pregnancies that are less than two and a half months. Beyond that, the chances of a failed abortion are higher. Contraceptives are readily available, but the cost could still be a factor. Condoms can be bought for little over S$4 , while birth-control pills and emergency contraception are more expensive because they require a doctor's prescription.The pregnancy restriction on migrant workers, which was introduced in 1986, has to do with Singapore’s “citizenship regime”, said Laavanya, an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University’s School of Social Sciences.
The pregnancy ban is “discriminatory”, said Jaya Anil Kumar, a senior research and advocacy manager in the non-governmental Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics. And as with every female employee in Hong Kong, if a domestic worker has been employed for at least 40 weeks, employers must provide 14 weeks of paid maternity leave.
While his helper was on maternity leave, he had to pay four fifths of her salary as well as hire a part-time helper as a replacement. Maid agent Samantha Chan makes a point of drilling this message into every new domestic worker who comes through her doors: “Your purpose here is to earn money. Don’t have a boyfriend, okay? … You’ll get yourself into trouble. You’ll go home.”In one employer’s view, the men involved should be penalised just as a pregnancy penalises the domestic worker and the employer.
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