In Hong Kong, 'Modern-Day Slavery' for Indentured Workers

(Bloomberg) Sitting on a picnic blanket in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park with fellow Indonesian domestic workers on a Sunday in October, 34-year-old Arida is holding back tears.

Moneylenders have demanded she turn over almost all of her HK$3,740 ($483) monthly salary to pay debts totaling 11 times that amount that she incurred finding a job, she says. When she stopped paying in July after being told fees she had been charged are illegal in Hong Kong, debt collectors harassed her and the family that employs her as a live-in helper.

“I want to shout for help but don’t know where to complain,” Arida says, giving only her first name because she’s afraid of losing her job. “This loan will be impossible to repay. I fear this will never go away. I cry every day.”

Thousands of women in Hong Kong with similar stories, most from Indonesia and the Philippines, are working off debt by turning over almost all of their pay for months to loan companies and agencies that place them with families, according to interviews with a dozen workers, four nonprofit groups that handle complaints and academic researchers. The moneylenders, part of Hong Kong’s shadow-banking system, are helping circumvent laws intended to protect the women, they said. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-13/indentured-servitude-in-hong-kong-abetted-by-loan-firms.html