History
Faced with a poor performing economy in the 1970s, the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos implemented the Labor Code of 1974, beginning the Philippines' export of labour in the form of Overseas Filipino Workers. The Philippine government promoted and encouraged labour export as a way to combat rising unemployment rates and to finance its coffers with overseas workers' remittances home. In the following years, the economy of the Philippines became increasingly dependent on labour export, and in 1978, recruiting agencies for labour export were privatised, making it a cornerstone of the Philippine national development strategy.
This trend of increasing labour export in the Philippines was to coincide with the economic rise of Hong Kong in the late 1970s and early 1980s. When the People's Republic of China implemented wide-reaching economic reforms in the late 1970s and initiated trade with other countries, Hong Kong became mainland China's biggest investor. Labour intensive industries in Hong Kong moved to the mainland, and high profit service industries such as design, marketing, and finance in the territory expanded dramatically. To deal with the resulting labour shortage and increase in labour costs, the female labour force was mobilised. Consequently, families with two incomes sought help to manage their households, creating demand for domestic workers. Hong Kong families began hiring foreign domestic helpers from the Philippines, with the number of them hired steadily increasing through the 1980s and the 1990s.
Until the 1990s, foreign domestic helpers mostly came from the Philippines. Since then, to cope with the different demands of prospective employers, the percentages have been shifting away from Philippine helpers, in favour of Indonesian and other nationalities. In the 1990s, Indonesia and Thailand followed the Philippines' model of labour export in order to deal with an increasing economic crisis and Hong Kong families began hiring foreign domestic helpers from these two countries as well. In 1998, according to the Immigration Department, there were 140,357 Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong compared to 31,762 from Indonesia. In 2005, official figures showed there were 223,394 foreign domestic helpers in the territory; 53.11% were from the Philippines, 43.15% from Indonesia, and 2.05% from Thailand. In 2010, the respective numbers are 136,723 from the Philippines (48%), 140,720 from Indonesia (49.4%), 3,744 from Thailand (1.3%), 893 Sri Lankans, 568 Nepalese, and 2,253 of other nationalities. Vietnamese are not permitted to work in Hong Kong as domestic helpers due to what authorities say are "security reasons", which one lawmaker said were linked to historical problems with Vietnamese refugees
Read more about this topic: Foreign Domestic Helpers In Hong Kong
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