Dubai police: Employers' cruelty main cause of maids' crimes

Noting the rising number of crimes committed by housemaids, an official from the police of Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) said one of the factors that trigger such crimes is “the employer’s cruelty,” a report of the news site Emirates 24|7 said on Sunday.    Citing an interview of Colonel Jamal Al Jallaf, deputy director of the Dubai detectives department with the Arabic daily Emirat Alyoum, Emirates 24/7 said there were some 1,000 crimes reported last year, higher by 17 percent compared to the 862 crimes reported in 2010.   Of the 1,000 cases in 2011, around 506 involved absconding while 108 were linked to sexual abuses, he said. He noted that Asian domestic workers were involved in some 583 offenses.   Al Jallaf called on employers to “deal with their domestic workers in a human and civilized manner” because cruelty “will eventually push them to retaliate.”   “We have handled some situations where families overburden their maids with household work or deny their rights,” he said, citing examples of the maids’ revenge schemes like mixing urine with food.   “Nice treatment of the maids will surely curtail their negative feelings towards the family and prevent them from taking revenge because of bad treatment,” he added.   ‘Ignorance of culture’   Al Jallaf noted that these crimes also occur because both employers and workers do not know about each other’s cultures.   He said some employer-families tend to overwork their household helpers because they “have no idea about the traditions and cultures of the maids’ home countries,” while most maids brought in the UAE “are either not qualified or are not aware of local habits and culture.”   Data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) show that out of some 340,000 Filipino “new hires” deployed in 2010, more than 96,000 were sent abroad to work under the “Household Service Workers” category.   With 13,184 household service workers deployed there in 2010, UAE—the second top destination for land-based Filipino migrant workers—ranked third in the list of top destinations for the said worker category. - with Rose-An Jessica Dioquino, VVP, GMA News