TENS of thousands of foreign maids in Hong Kong are in “forced labor,” according to a new report that fuels growing criticism of the city’s treatment of its army of domestic workers.
The study by the Justice Centre estimates that one in six, or 50,000 of Hong Kong’s more than 300,000 migrant domestic workers — mainly from Indonesia and the Philippines — fell into the “forced labor” category.
Its findings come after a report by the UN Committee Against Torture in December urged Hong Kong authorities to reform laws in order to protect victims of forced labor and trafficking.
The plight of the city’s domestic workers was also thrown into the international spotlight by the high-profile abuse case of Indonesian maid Erwiana Sulistyaningsih, whose Hong Kong employer received a six-year jail sentence last year.
The new report defined forced labor as employment for which the worker had not been recruited freely, was not doing the job freely, or could not walk away from work.
Fourteen percent of those in forced labor had been trafficked into the city, it said.