Maid for Trouble

What is with the recent spate of maids committing crimes? Earlier this year, 2 homesick and clinically depressed maids murdered their employer. A couple of months ago, a woman was found dead lying in a pool of blood and her maid was arrested. Earlier this month, in the now infamous Orchard Road body-parts case, a maid was accused of murdering a countrywoman, also a domestic worker. And just yesterday, the papers reported the story of a maid who was poisoning her aged employer with soap.

It used to be that the papers were full of horror stories about maid abuse. We still get these stories, at depressingly frequent intervals. It is not that the tide is turning, but that the tide is becoming stronger. Foreign domestic workers are the disturbing face of global inequality. Whether victims or perpertrators of crime, their stories show us uncomfortable truths about our society and the world we live in.

How many of us can truly comprehend the poverty that FDWs leave behind to seek employment in our more affluent shores? No matter how empathetic, how can we truly understand their sense of displacement or their feelings of fear and trepidation? Most adjust perfectly well; humans are resilient and adaptable creatures, after all. Yet, there are those who cannot adjust as easily and are plagued by human reactions: depression, despair, resentment and fear. From such human frailties are crimes born.

There are no easy answers, perhaps no answer at all. The problem with people is that, well, they have personalities and feelings. Feelings are messy things that we cannot fix with policies, frameworks or laws. Much less feelings that we cannot truly grasp in full (for which we should count ourselves blessedly fortunate).

If we are merciful, we would wish for a world where poverty does not turn young women into tradeable commodities to be sold abroad to more affluent nations.