157 families selected to use Seoul’s foreign home helper service

The Seoul city government has selected 157 families to use domestic helpers from the Philippines as part of a pilot project aimed at reducing childcare burdens and boosting the birth rate, officials said Wednesday. Last week, the first group of 100 female Filipino workers arrived in South Korea as part of the project. The families were selected from a total of 751 households that applied to use the service, officials said. About 62 percent of the selected families had working parents and multiple children, while 9 percent had an expecting mother, with 4.5 percent representing single-parent households. Nearly 38 percent of the selected families were from four affluent districts in southern Seoul, including Gangnam and Seocho. The city said the service will start on Sept. 3 following the completion of necessary paperwork. The program was introduced as part of efforts to help tackle the low birth rate, but there is lingering skepticism among prospective users. One point of skepticism is the relatively hi gh cost of foreign home helpers, whose monthly wages amount to 2.38 million won (US$1,748) based on an eight-hour workday and the current legal minimum wage of 9,860 won per hour. This amount represents about half of the median income of 5.1 million won for families of people in their 30s. The city has requested that the justice ministry grant special exemption from the legally binding minimum wage for the Philippine workers and is currently awaiting a response. Another point of contention is the vague definition of the foreign workers' scope of duties. Their main duties are restricted to childcare-related tasks, such as feeding, cooking and bathing children, washing children's kitchenware and babysitting. For those providing services longer than six hours, additional house chores can be performed, including laundry, dishwashing and cleaning. However, taking out the garbage, cooking for adults or organizing the house are prohibited. Prospective users say this categorization may become jumbled and impract ical when immigrant home helpers actually perform their domestic duties. The city and the labor ministry said they plan to operate a support system to address complaints both from immigrant workers and users during the pilot service period. Source: Yonhap News Agency