Life is so relative. During the heights when the typhoon Ondoy caused a lot of destruction in the Philippines, I was practically hooked on Facebook, looking at all the news and YouTube films showing the extent of the damage to lives and properties. As a Filipina abroad I felt so helpless not being able to do anything (though I contributed to the relief operations) to help my kababayans.
At about the same period I was trying to address a complaint of a resident in a neighbourhood. As a city councilor I get these sort of complaints every now and then. This resident complained about the placing of a children's playground right in front of her house. According to her this is causing her a lot of stress, with all the noise the children were making. I went to visit her to hear out her complaints, and I could not help recalling what my father used to say about the noise of playing children, that "when you hear children playing, the angels are around". I was then tempted to share this with the woman complaining, but held back. I had to remind myself that life is so relative. For this woman, this problem was real and probably her biggest concern at that moment.
When I was watching a house (and all those people on its roof) being washed away by the flood caused by the typhoon Ondoy, in one of the YouTube films, I could just imagine how terrible it was for all those people out there. For those people, what was happening to them was real and was their biggest concern at that moment. I know that life is so relative. I just sometimes find it difficult to deal with it when I live in two perspectives.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Domestic helpers
Last December/January I visited the Philippines for a month. It was nice to see family members and old friends again. But one thing though which made an impression on me was the situation of domestic helpers. I'm of course familiar with the practice of having domestic helpers in the Philippines, so this was not something new to me. What however continued to bother me is the fact that the situation of domestic helpers hasn't changed at all for the better. While it seems that the income of some segment of the Filipinos has grown (more and more people eat out and the shopping malls are always full of buying public!), the salaries of domestic helpers have remained very low, ranging from P 1,500.00 to 2,500.00 (pesos) per month. In Manila, the salaries of domestic helpers are maybe a bit higher, ranging up to P 3,000.00 (pesos) per month. This amount is not even enough to buy a branded pair of pants! Just a few days after our arrival in the Philippines I bought a dress to wear to our birthday party, as my husband and I were holding a party to celebrate our 50th birthdays. It was actually just a simple dress which costs around P 2,000.00 (pesos). I then requested the domestic helper of my in-laws where we stayed to wash my new dress before I would wear it. I didn't bother to take off the price tag. But when I realized how much the domestic helpers are earning, I really felt so ashamed of myself!
It's not only the low wages which bothers me, but also the unchanged working conditions of domestic helpers. They don't have clear working hours. As they live in the house of the family they worked for, they are in practice always on-call to do errands for the family. They don't have any SSS benefits (pension benefits), no health insurance, no clear number of vacation leave with pay, etc. This situation has always been the case years ago. But what surprised me a lot is the fact that seemingly the gains of the workers' unions struggle for the betterment of workers' conditions have not reached the domestic helpers. Hasn't any union thought about the domestic helpers? And what about the various people's organizations? And what about all those women organizations (as most of the domestic helpers are women) fighting for the rights of women? It's really very sad to see that seemingly nobody has ever thought about the plight of our domestic helpers. Days after my return back to The Netherlands, I still keep thinking about the sad state of our domestic helpers. I feel so frustrated that I can't do anything about it from where I am. I just hope that this blog will inspire somebody out there in the Philippines to do something to improve the situation of our domestic helpers, and let them also go with the tide of development in the country.
It's not only the low wages which bothers me, but also the unchanged working conditions of domestic helpers. They don't have clear working hours. As they live in the house of the family they worked for, they are in practice always on-call to do errands for the family. They don't have any SSS benefits (pension benefits), no health insurance, no clear number of vacation leave with pay, etc. This situation has always been the case years ago. But what surprised me a lot is the fact that seemingly the gains of the workers' unions struggle for the betterment of workers' conditions have not reached the domestic helpers. Hasn't any union thought about the domestic helpers? And what about the various people's organizations? And what about all those women organizations (as most of the domestic helpers are women) fighting for the rights of women? It's really very sad to see that seemingly nobody has ever thought about the plight of our domestic helpers. Days after my return back to The Netherlands, I still keep thinking about the sad state of our domestic helpers. I feel so frustrated that I can't do anything about it from where I am. I just hope that this blog will inspire somebody out there in the Philippines to do something to improve the situation of our domestic helpers, and let them also go with the tide of development in the country.
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