Though it asks high salaries for its maids, non-refundable deposits plus additional training fees, a housemaid service agency in Thuong Hamlet, Me Tri Commune, Tu Liem District, Hanoi still has more clients than it can handle.

The manager said his agency could only provide hourly housemaid services at VND3 million/month for 10 hours/day now. As for full-time housemaids of whatever level (“common,” “experienced,” or “perfect”), there wasn’t any of them around to offer.

This is a happy sign for housemaid service agencies which have always enjoyed a surge of clients looking for new housemaids after Tet as their old ones often go home for the long holiday and for various reasons, prefer not to return.

This year, however, housemaid demand seems even higher than usual.

Le Thi Hoang, Director of Hoang Long Housemaid Service Agency on Ba Thang Hai Road in District 10, HCMC, said she received 40-50 new clients everyday and estimated demand to be 20-30 percent higher this year.

Given increasing demand, housemaid services now fetch higher prices compared to a few years ago.

First-time housemaids can be paid as much as VND2 million/month. If clients seek housemaids through an agency, they usually have to pay an additional non-refundable deposit fee of several hundred thousand dong.

Experienced housemaids, who often find employment by word of mouth, demands higher and can be paid up to VND5 million/month.

Increasingly aware of higher market demand for their services, many housemaids are ingeniously pushing for higher salaries and better working conditions, some of which are reasonable and justified and some, according to their employers, are downright obnoxious.

“Housemaids these days aren’t as they used to be,” said Khanh Quyen, a resident in Tan Binh District, HCMC. After working for her for just three months, her most recent housemaid asked for a full one-month paid leave for the Tet holiday and promised to return on the 6th day of Tet.

Her housemaid didn’t return though. Quyen said she simply turned off her cell-phone.

For many housemaids, this is a way of pushing for higher salaries. Many return home for the holiday, hear that their services may be paid higher elsewhere, so opt not to go back to their current employers or to go back with new conditions.

Thu, a former housemaid from Nghi Xuan District, Thanh Hoa Province offered another reason. She said unskilled youths in her hometown now prefer working in factories in industrial zones rather being housemaids, making housemaids much harder to find.

Those better conditions housemaids are asking today range from employers’ promise to “respect, never to insult or scold” to having sinks installed with hot and cold water.

Employers who have small children and busy careers said given their desperate needs for housemaids and the difficulties of finding new ones, they often gave in, however grudgingly.

“You have to yield because you need them,” said Thuan, a resident in District 3, HCMC who hires three housemaids, one of whom takes care of his invalid mother for VND5 million/month. “I’m just afraid she’ll ask for a raise again.”

Source: Tuoi Tre