“Go to the Bukit Timah Shopping Centre, a 1970s mall in central Singapore, and you will find five levels of brightly lit rooms and galleries called ‘Homekeeper’ and ‘Budget Maid,'” reports Michael Malay in Al Jazeera Online.
The report said that “inside (the said) rooms, dozens of women sit in a listless, artificial silence…and you might take one home with you—for two years, or longer.”
The report explained that the women are domestic workers from Indonesia, the Philippines, and Myanmar. “They sit beneath garish signs and posters, testifying to their friendliness and industriousness, or advertising ‘super promo’ rates and ‘special discounts,'” it pointed out.
The report went on to reveal: “Some ‘maid agencies,’ as they’re known locally, display women at work. Along one aisle, domestic workers push each other around in wheelchairs, as though they’re taking care of the elderly. In another gallery, a woman cradles a baby doll and pretends to change its diapers. Others stand in mock living rooms ironing the same shirt, or making the same bed—scenes enacted elsewhere in Singapore at malls like Katong Shopping Centre on Mountbatten Road.”
Screengrab of Al Jazeera article
