Malaysians reject day off move for Indonesian maids

Kuala Lumpur: Proposals to give the hundreds of thousands of Indonesian maids working in Malaysia a day off a week have drawn ire from both employers and business groups who believe households will break down.

While Filipino maids are generally given a day off each week, the 370,000 Indonesian maids who work in this southeast Asian country of 27 million people are not generally given any time off.

The government had proposed the day off after a series of high profile cases involving mistreatment of Indonesian maids by employers - most recently a case in which a maid was assaulted with hot water, a hammer and a pair of scissors.

An SMS poll for The Star newspaper published on Friday showed that 76 per cent of 585 respondents believed that giving maids the day off was a bad idea.

"I feel that by giving a weekly day off to the maid will expose them to unwanted activities such as dating boyfriends and bringing guys back when the bosses are at work," Noora Mat Rifin wrote in a letter to The Star on Friday.

"Do they need a such a day off? I took my maid out every weekend to the malls and I give them a day off every now and then," she wrote.