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Hong Kong’s domestic worker shortage: Bangladesh can help out, even if Indonesia can’t
- Hong Kong needs more foreign domestic workers, not only to care for its ageing population, but also to counter a policy long threatened by Indonesia
- Bangladesh could be a new source – but the city had faced problems in hiring from there previously
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Even before Tajmira received her engineering diploma three years ago, she had prepared herself for the likelihood she would not be able to get a job in the field.
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So she turned to a garment factory instead, becoming one of the estimated 3.5 million labourers in Bangladesh who make clothing for local and international brands. She made only 10,000 taka (US$116) a month, hardly enough to support her family of five, which includes two younger sisters still in school.
“It was very difficult to get an engineering job in Bangladesh. I studied engineering just because I liked the subject,” Tajmira, 24, said.
Like many Bangladeshis from the rural areas, Tajmira did not know where Hong Kong was. But when two friends told her that they were happily making HK$4,520 a month as domestic workers in the city, almost five times what she was making in Bangladesh, she decided to follow their lead.
“I want to earn a lot of money and help my family. It will be my first time to Hong Kong. But I am not afraid. Of course, I am going to miss my family,” Tajmira said at the four-floor training centre in Northern Bangladesh, about an hour’s flight from Dhaka, where she was taking lessons in Chinese cooking and language alongside compatriot Lailatul Ferdous, 41.“No problem. Very easy,” she said in Cantonese when asked if she spoke the language.
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