Hike in Singapore ‘Maid Tax’ Stirs Furor

Wong Siew Hoon figured she would do her patriotic best to comply with the government’s exhortations to juggle a job and a large family.

With the help of a full-time maid, Wong planned a third child while maintaining her position as personnel assistant in a production firm.

But a sudden crackdown on foreign workers has left Wong bewildered.

Smacked with a $100-a-month levy on her Filipino maid starting in July, Wong and other working mothers say naive officials are sabotaging a baby boom and intensifying the acute labor shortage by turning essential household help into a luxury.

With the cost of her maid soaring to half of her salary, Wong said: “I will probably have to give up my job or not have a baby.

“I am really offended.”

For two years, population planners in Singapore having been urging couples to have at least three children to combat the shrinking population, currently at 2.6 million.

Coinciding with the baby campaign have been equally ardent pleas urging women to return to the work force, hit by a severe labor shortage.

The government’s drive to curb the influx of maids has generated an outcry among parents that has reached Parliament.

Kasiviswanathan Shanmugan, a married lawmaker without children, fears that the 66% hike in the levy--which means many couples will no longer be able to afford a maid--will exacerbate an already critical shortage of child-care centers.

The whopping fee is part of a package of measures announced by Labor Minister Lee Yock Suan to stem the flow of foreign workers, streaming in at a rate of 2,000 to 3,000 every month at “an enormous social and economic cost.”

Women contend that they cannot work and raise a family without domestic help.

“I have three young children,” Ivy Lee said. “If I can no longer afford my maid and she walks off, you won’t see me in the office.”

Filipino maids are particularly popular because of their fluency in English and ease with youngsters. Most maids send the bulk of their monthly wages home to desperately poor families. Other maids come from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

Employers, forking out about $150 a month in salary in addition to supplying room and board plus air fare from the country of origin, contend that the new levy constitutes an unreasonable burden.

Minister Lee remains unmoved, contending there is no contradiction between the levy and other policies encouraging work and bigger families. He notes that the government is aiming for at least 200 child-care centers by year’s end.