Phoneless Maid = Problems Free Employer

I know there are people outthere who allow their maids to have handphones. Even some of my neighbours do this.

Personally, I detest and object this idea. Why? Because allowing them to have handphone means exposing us the employers to more maid problems. Everyone wants a less problematic maids.
So why do we need to open up more doors to these?

I know that some of us allow them to give phones so that they can call us whenever there is an emergency at home. Yeah, imagine we can't be contacted when one of our children is sick or something bad happen to them. Or that the house is on fire.

But we can always provide the house phone as another medium of communication. In fact, we can tell the maid to call the neighbours next door if there is an emergency. Of if there is no neighbours next door, our maid can always go to the other neighbours who live in the same lane.
I don't think most of us doesn't know our neighbours at all.. Unless u don't mix at all.. That i can't help.

And some said, just give the maid prepaid phones. Let them use their own money to pay for the calls. Of course , this is good for our wallet. Or, the maid will stop using their handphones once they run out of prepaid ( as they need to ask us the employee to help them buy the prepaids)

Well, hello! The maids will never run out of prepaids. They can always get help from your mom's maid, your SIL's & BIL's maid, or your neighbours' maid. Thus, how to stop them..

And do u think u can keep track of the phone bills and calls? Not when the maids are using prepaids. But if they are using the house fixed phone lines, it is so much easier to keep track of it.. We can easier tell that the house fixed phone line have been abused when all off a sudden this month's telephone bill is higher than last month. Both of u & hubby are working during the day. So it can't be u and hubby who made all the extra phone calls. Thus, who else but the maid?

But how to reason it out to our maid that they can't have handphone. Even when the handphone is paid by them?

U can start by reminding them, that their main motives of coming here to our country is to earn an income or money. And if since money is not easy to earn back home in their homeland, why do they want to spend it unnecessarily on handphones and phone calls.. Tell them that u as the concerned & kind hearted employees would let them make the calls using the house phones or use our own handphones. Tell them, u are giving them free phone calls. Any employees would be happy to hear this free phone calls. They need only to inform u when they want to make the calls.

And yes, use I-Talk as it is cheap . Both either using the house fixed line or via handphones.

But what if, some of u out there say that my maid is one good maid? Well, have u ever heard of how some else's maid who have been working here for the past 10 years and whose personality is so down to earth, humble, hard working and now had run away with another person , taking along with her her employer's jewelery and money?

I know not all maids are evil and yes that some of them have good & honest personality. But people can always changed. Even we too.. So , until their characters changed from good to evil, we as the employers might as well prepared ourselves by not exposing ourselves to more problems that we can already handle.

To give or not to give handphone to your maid.

The choice is yours.