Shades Off | With Covid-19, Hong Kong’s addiction to domestic helpers is becoming dangerous
- The scheme to allow in helpers from Indonesia and the Philippines, badly hit by Covid-19, is alarming
- Is Hong Kong is so hooked on cheap labour that it is willing to risk its residents’ health?
Flights were sensibly suspended to prevent local outbreaks, but employers seeking cheap labour helped persuade the authorities to have them resumed. The government was bound to cave in as the resulting shortage had led to spiralling wages and the knock-on effects would have revealed just how broken the city had become.
But there’s nothing straightforward about plans to bring in new maids who have documents showing they have also been immunised.
No matter how much effort is made to verify such claims, there are two reasons they should be barred; Indonesia and the Philippines are in the grip of serious coronavirus surges involving the Delta and other worrying variants, while both countries also rank poorly in global assessments of corruption.
On a list of 180 nations, Transparency.org placed Indonesia as the 102nd least-corrupt place and the Philippines at 115th in its latest ranking. Hong Kong is ranked as the 11th least corrupt, along with Australia, Britain and Canada.
