8 Hours of Sleep for Filipino Maids in Taipei

The City Government of Taipei urged employers to allow Filipino maids to have eight hours of uninterrupted sleep each night and let them have a separate room. This is in response to the appeal of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) to foreign countries.

The director of the Taipei City Government’s Department of Labor Su Ying-kui said that since the human rights is concern, employers must provide reasonable accommodation for Filipino maids and allow them enough time for sleep.

“These measures concern the human rights of Filipino workers. We will try to achieve this goal through a public awareness campaign. If some employers continue to exploit foreign workers, we do not rule out terminating their hiring contracts,” he warned.

He also added that eight hours of uninterrupted sleep is reasonable and necessary, some employers may find it hard to provide a separate room to Filipino maids.Ying-kui suggested that “reasonable accommodation” should refer to either a separate room or employers should allow the Filipino share a room with their child under five years old. There are more than 150,000 foreign maids imported in Taiwan and most of them are Filipinos. Some foreign maids in Taipei have complained that they do not have separate rooms. They are forced to work long hours and do not have days off, like Sundays or other holidays. Some Filipino Catholic maids have complained that their employers do not allow them to go to church during Sundays, while some Indonesian maids said they are not allowed to go the mosque on Friday.

This article was first published in www.ofwguide.com on February 24, 2007