WHILE Malaysia determinedly pursues the goal of a “high-income” nation by 2028, a quiet phenomenon is unfolding in Malaysian homes.
This phenomenon is linked to the rapidly ageing population in Malaysia and its impact on a most vulnerable, low-income group of women whose working lives operate outside the protection of the Employment Act 1955.
The middle-class dream in Malaysia of a married couple pursuing their careers is made possible by a silent engine: marginalised, low-income women working as domestic workers. Yet, when these women grow old, the system remains oblivious to their living in poverty. This is not an accident; it is a phenomenon created by our laws that disregard the lives of the most vulnerable.
For decades, the government has treated housework and caregiving as not “real” work, explicitly leaving domestic workers out of the main protections of the Employment Act 1955.
As a result of this exclusion in the law, employers are not legally required to give local domestic workers set working hours, mandatory rest days, medical benefits or even a formal notice of termination.
While the nature of the work is every bit as demanding and backbreaking as any manual labour, there is a tendency to refer to domestic work as “flexible” work. As a result, women domestic workers are completely unprotected from various forms of abuse.
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