Basket.

The headline for this Monday's Straits Times should have read "SLAVERY FINALLY OUTLAWED - Maids to be treated at last as higher-order creatures than pubic lice". But that's not entirely accurate, because the one day off per month that maids will from next year get written as a clause into their contracts is not exactly enshrined in the law. The most they can claim if their employers don't give them their one day off in thirty is breach of contract - not a crimnal offence, although they can take their employers to court. It's not a strong enough deterrent to ensure full compliance.

But it's a step forward, nonetheless, although that it took so long and triggered a very public debate shows just how far Singapore is from being a gracious society. Some of the letters fired to the ST Forum in the course of this debate were simply disgusting. It's one day off in an entire bloody month; seriously, why is it such a terrible loss to you to give your maid one day off in thirty? You already pay them a pittance, but you will deny them even this? Most Singaporeans would. And people complain that Singaporeans always need the law (or something like it) to force them to behave well.

Appallingly, only 23% of maids get one day off per month currently, and less than one in ten a day off per week (if I remember the article correctly). One maid featured within the article was made to work 19 hours a day. I was horrified, quite honestly. Singapore prides itself on being a modern, industrialised nation, but this sort of behaviour from its citizens shows quite the opposite. Singaporeans think it is right to work their foreign domestic workers to the bone with insufficient rest and a pittance of a salary. Genuinely, forget all that fuck about not letting pregnant women have your seat on the bus - our awful treatment of maids is what shows us how long a way we have to go before we get to that elusive gracious society.

So now, something. One day per month. Still insufficient, but it's a start. Doubtless, plenty of employers are going to find a way around it, outright defy it or simply browbeat their maids into suffering silently. That's hardly avoidable. But this is the land where the right to vote was once labelled a "privilege", so why should I be surprised that one day's rest per every month is going to be the height of magnanimity for most maid employers?