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Opinion | Don’t treat helpers as scapegoats for Hong Kong’s struggling vaccine drive
- Officious justifications for why singling out foreign domestic helpers should not be considered discriminatory are far from convincing
- Instead of asking employers to ‘encourage and assist’ helpers to get vaccinated, the government should focus on getting the local population to sign up
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Covid-19 has too often brought out the worst in many societies around the world, particularly in terms of aggravating income, racial, gender and other inequalities. Hong Kong, despite its relative success in combating the pandemic, is unfortunately no exception.
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The recent testing order for all of the nearly 400,000 foreign domestic helpers in the city, and plans (suspended after a diplomatic backlash) to make vaccination mandatory before renewal of their contracts is exhibit A.
Officials seemed blithely unaware of the irony that the timing of the testing order meant over 100,000 had to spend hours on a hot Labour Day on Saturday waiting in seemingly endless queues to get tested during a “holiday” meant to honour workers.
Officious justifications for why this singling out of helpers should not be considered discriminatory are far from convincing. Calling it a “risk-based decision” is an elastic term that could cover virtually anybody. The government asserts that since compulsory testing also applies to people in other high-risk industries, such as staff of residential care homes for the elderly, “there is no discrimination on race or status”.
But if there is truly no discrimination, mandatory testing would be applied either only to those helpers involved in elderly care or to a larger number of workers – both local and foreign – in a wider range of industries. Instead, the Hong Kong government has chosen to pick on the weakest, most vulnerable group of the population due to two unrelated cases of helpers with a mutated form of the virus.
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Hong Kong domestic helpers slam ‘discriminatory’ Covid-19 rules
Hong Kong domestic helpers slam ‘discriminatory’ Covid-19 rules
It is said foreign domestic helpers have chosen to work in Hong Kong and are not permanent residents. Thus, they should accept government policy decisions uncomplainingly. But this group cannot choose their status.
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