Foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong

Foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong (Chinese: 香港外籍家庭傭工) are domestic workers employed by Hongkongers, typically families. They comprise five percent of Hong Kong's population, and about 98.5% of them are women. In 2019, there were 400,000 foreign domestic helpers in the territory. Required by law to live in their employer's residence, they perform household tasks such as cooking, serving, cleaning, dishwashing and child care.^[1]

From October 2003 the employment of domestic workers was subject to the unpopular Employees' Retraining Levy, totalling HK$9,600 for a two-year contract. It had not been applied since 16 July 2008 when it was finally abolished in 2013. Whether foreign workers should be able to apply for Hong Kong residency is a subject of debate, and a high-profile court battle for residency by a foreign worker failed.^[2][3]

The conditions of foreign domestic workers are being increasingly scrutinised by human-rights groups and are criticised as tantamount to modern slavery. Documented cases of worker abuse, including the successful prosecution of an employer for subjecting Erwiana Sulistyaningsih to grievous bodily harm, assault, criminal intimidation and unpaid wages, are increasing in number.^[4] In March 2016, an NGO, Justice Centre, reported its findings that one domestic worker in six in Hong Kong were deemed to have been forced into labour.^[5]