How to fire a Foreign Domestic Worker

It took me a long time to reconcile to the fact that I had made the wrong hiring decision with the help I recruited when we had first moved to Singapore, a year and a half back. I am unwilling to take complete responsibility for it, even though there are people (read husband) in the house who will blame it on my man management style. I had never had  a live-in help in my entire life till July 2010 when we moved here. So, it took me sometime to learn the ropes, so to speak. I was laissez faire in my way with her, giving her the freedom to choose how she scheduled her work. She had made tall claims about being trained by an Indian chef from no lesser than a star hotel in her previous employer’s house. Being the foodies-turned-new-age- dieters, this swung the deal in her favour. After all, we were not hard wired to turn up our nose to the promise of ghee soaked phulkas and tantalizing dhal makhni.

I should have sensed that things were not going to be the way I imagined it was going to be, the day she reorganized the drawers and the shelves in my kitchen. I belong to the generation that believes that spoons belong in the spoon rack and glasses have to be kept upside down, plates have to be stacked size wise. When I saw the clutter in the kitchen, my sixth sense should have warned me. As it were to be, it did not.

I have to admit that her cooking skills were not disappointing for a period of time. I had to only plan the meal and check if she knew how to make it, tinker it to our taste and viola! Meal after meal at dinner was delicious. We had stopped venturing out on weekend food orgies, finding renowned restaurants that served authentic North Indian food because we had enough variety at home during the week. I continued to cook the traditional weekend meals since Sunday’s were a day off work for our help. Things took a bitter turn a few months into the contract. Her personal hygiene could put the pigs to shame, her phone habits were poor that it caused our then year-old Golden Retriever, Maxx, a horrible freak accident that left him a few digits shorter on the tail bone, she interfered in my ward robe decisions, my daughter’s grooming tips, she was loud ( I am loud and we couldn’t have two loud people under the same roof), had fights in her native tongue over phone and only when the house was quiet, she did not appreciate visitors, especially long term dependent ones like our moms, she stayed out longer that she was allowed most Sundays’ and gave us lame reasons for it.  The constant attempts to correct her and request to change her ways, was met with stiff resistance and it began to show in the quality of her work and worst of all, the cooking!

It was the Sunday’s that really pushed me into calling the deal off with her finally. It was her day off and that left me to fend for myself, the family, the dog and everything else at home. It was on Sunday’s that I gauged the  quality of work done during the week when I was being laissez faire. It took more than a few Sundays though to finally muster enough grit and courage to tell her that I have made up my mind about letting her go. I had to bear the brunt of being called a bad man manager and showed ways of mending my ways with her. But enough water had flown over the proverbial bridge. After several months of deliberations, I finally gave the information that she will no longer be on our payroll.

Deciding to let her go was the hardest decision to make. She had been a part of the household when our 3 month old Golden Retriever set paw into our house. For me, that was the biggest worry. Will Maxx stop eating if she was not around? Will he miss her? I was sure the family wouldn’t… but the dog?! The process of letting her go was simpler and that is the reason for this post.

The Process.

The Government of Singapore makes it easy for the employer to call off the arrangement with the help the day you decide that you were not meant to be together till the contract did you apart. Each contract lasts for two years. At the end of the 2 year contract, if your help and you are happy with each other, then you can decide to redo the contract. The help gets a break before she continues. Typically, the government expects the employer to send the help back home on an all paid expense trip for a period of a month or longer ( I am not sure). Many families let their helpers go and find other employment by requesting a transfer with the agencies from whom they recruited. The transfer process is simplified too. The new employer is required to sign the forms of employment which then is sent to the Ministry of Manpower (MoM) who process the Work Permit (WP) under the new employer’s name, upon which the WP in the current employer’s name becomes invalid. Sometimes, transfer opportunities do not arise when you or your  helper needs it. In such cases, the MoM allows you to cancel the WP online and confirms the status back to you in less than half an hour. The ministry also provides you with an Exit Pass for the helper to leave the country within a stipulated time ( 7 days maximum).

In our case, our helper did not want to go back to her home town since she had found the next employer (God save them) who intended to hire her from the first week of next month. So, in the interim, she traveled to a close by location, outside of Singapore with her Exit Pass. The MoM gives you the flexibility of sending the helper to go where she wants to go. However, having heard recounts of what could go wrong in the event we sent her elsewhere other than her home country, we wisely took a written note signed by her that said she was going to the country of her choice at her own freewill. I also took a phone number where I could reach her in the interim, if things did not progress the way I imagined it should with the Ministry. Within a week, we received a notification from the Ministry that we had officially been discharged of all the liabilities of the cancelled WP.

We found another help when our first was serving her notice period of 21 days. On the flip side, the new help has never worked for an Indian family, she cannot cook, her language skills are not great and she has never taken care of a pet. But on the up side, she works quietly around the house, takes two Sunday’s off in a month and gets home before 7 in the evening, she is learning to walk the dog, is patient, unhurried, calm.

If you have had a similar experience, I would love to hear how you handled it.