KUALA LUMPUR, 29 June 2009: Malaysians are not keen to become domestic helpers because of the low wages, the Human Resources Ministry said today.
A recent ministry study found that “more than 70% of employers are only willing to offer monthly wages of between RM300 and RM500 for domestic help,” Deputy Minister Datuk Noraini Ahmad said in Parliament.
“This wage would never be able to attract interest from locals,” she said.
Noraini said the study was designed to look into the viability of a training institute for local maids.
“The ministry forwarded this proposal in 2007 as a step towards increasing the participation of locals in the profession, besides reducing our dependency on foreign domestic help,” she said.
“As a whole, our study has found that there is no pressing need to start such an institute,” Noraini added.
However, Noraini said the ministry would study further the training institute idea in the light of the number of problems involving domestic helpers recently.
Noraini was answering a question by Dungun Member of Parliament (MP) Matulidi Jusoh about the domestic help training institute proposal.
Malaysia is poised to face a shortage of domestic help following Indonesia‘s 25 June decision to temporarily halt sending over its citizens to work here as helpers.
This was in response to mounting complaints that Indonesian maids were being abused by employers here.
Indonesia is the primary source of the 300,000 domestic maids in Malaysia. 
