Yangon authorities have arrested one woman and are searching for another woman for illegally running an overseas employment agency out of a house in Thanlyin.
Police were alerted of the situation by Ko Ko Aung — the uncle of a girl who had gone to the agency for work — on Saturday night. Several weeks after she had left for Yangon in the hopes of being sent abroad for a job as a housemaid, Ko Ko Aung’s niece called to tell him that she and a number of other girls were just waiting at a house in Thanlyin while the women in charge tried to find them jobs.
When authorities arrived at the address, they discovered 10 girls and one boy, all of whom were in the same situation as Ko Ko Aung’s niece.
According to Kumudra, the group arrived at the house approximately two months ago.
The culprits have been identified as Chit Zay Zay and Win Win Aye. Police arrested 22-year-old Chit Zay Zay on Saturday evening, but Win Win Aye is still on the run.
“The girls were told that they would be maids in Singapore, and that seven months’ pay would have go towards paying off their agent fees. They [the culprits] don’t have broker licenses [to send workers abroad]; they’re running this illegally,” Thanlyin regional MP Nay Lin Aung explained to Kumudra.
Both women are being sued for operating an overseas employment agency without the necessary licenses.
Because all the victims originally reside in rural parts of the country, authorities are housing them at the Vocational Training Center for Women in Bahan while the investigation is taking place.
After several reports of abuse overseas, the Myanmar government passed a law in 2014 banning citizens from seeking domestic work in other countries. However, that hasn’t stopped impoverished citizens, especially those from rural parts of Myanmar, from trying to find ways to work abroad as housemaids due to the better pay that they would receive there as opposed to if they were to work here. Many of these overseas housemaids then send the money back home for their families to live off of.
As such, it’s common nowadays for agents to bribe officials into allowing them to (illegally) send local girls abroad, especially to nearby cities such as Singapore, to work as housemaids. Additionally, although Singaporean law dictates that all foreign maids must be above the age of 23, local agents will often produce fake documentation claiming that their workers are several years older than they actually are.
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