Five ways to lose an Indonesian maid

At 1 am, I decided and accepted the fact that I’d been had. And I went home, maidless.

According to all of my friends and the people I know who have or had Indonesian maids before, I was quite lucky that I lost her that way, unlike some cases where maids fled with their employer’s belongings or putting their employer’s children at risk. Stats show about 12,000 maids flee from their employers every year here in Malaysia.

Sometimes we hear news about maids being abused, but we hardly ever hear about employers being abused - by maids. Such a notion isn’t too far-fetched though.

In a way, I and many other friends have been emotionally and mentally abused by the experience of employing domestic maids. When we have maids, we can’t stop thinking about how to make them stay and take care of our children and home - honestly, responsibly and dutifully.

After one year living with my maid, who’s birthday is today, 28-year old Srimila Sutejo from Surabaya, whom I employed after painstakingly going through the proper channels and at the cost of thousands upon thousands of ringgit, I must say I still can’t figure out why she left.

After exchanging notes with my mother and friends who shared similar experiences like mine, I found out that there were a lot of things I did wrong, resulting in her leaving.

And so I have narrowed down my five major mistakes, which I translate to the five (major) ways on how to lose your Indonesian maid in one year (or less):

1. Treat her like she’s family – Treat your maid like a sister, make her feel at home in your home, so she can come and go as she pleases.

2. Give her the trust she needs – Trust her as much as you can. Don’t install any surveillance cameras, let her have the extra key – she may need to host her friends and family in your house as she plans her next working destination.

3. Let her out on her day off – She needs to go out to search for contacts and network, to plan for bigger or easier money. Taking care of your three young children is not her number one career goal in this country.

4. Give her a room of her own – She needs the privacy to use her phone to connect with her boyfriend(s) and family members, or set a rendezvous on her day off, or choreographing her escape plan.

5. Be generous with money – She needs the money to buy her necessities like top-up for her numerous pre-paid cards and numbers and cab fare.

Really, losing a maid is just disturbing. It has been a week and my husband and I are still not over it today.

What’s more frustrating is that employers like me are not protected. At all. I had to lodge a police report for I fear that she will gallivant on my expenses. I had to change all the house locks, fearing she would come back and wipe my house clean (pun intended).

And I had to pay a sum of RM250 to blacklist her from the system. What kind of system is this actually? Why is everything stacked up in their favour? Who’s looking out for us and our children?

I know that not all Indonesian maids are as heartless or ruthless. There are some lucky employers who have wonderful and loyal domestic help from Indonesia. If there are others like them, to these few, wherever you are, our hopes lie with you.