After the case of Kit Antony (Tony) Lam and his wife Ming Wei (Tiffanie) Tong regarding “allegedly having paid their Filipino nanny the equivalent of $2.33 an hour for 12 months and requiring her to work up to 106 hours a week with just two days off in a year”, the HelperChoice platform is implementing a new feature enabling employers to pay domestic workers directly through its service, making it possible to control and track the monthly salary paid to foreign domestic workers by their employers according to the local regulations.
The ethical platform was approached by the Fair Work Ombudsman in 2017 for assistance in providing records and documents to verify the employment relationship between Mr Lam and his nanny.
HelperChoice is the leading online recruitment platform in Hong Kong and Singapore for domestic employment. HelperChoice’s mission since 2012 is to eradicate placement fees and human trafficking for the purpose of forced labour. The company aims to revolutionise the recruitment agency industry for domestic workers in Asia: No middlemen, no hidden charges nor fees.
The platform currently operates in Hong Kong and Singapore and was never opened for the hire of Foreign Domestic Workers (FDW) in Australia. HelperChoice was not aware of Mr. Lam’s usage of the service for a nanny position in Australia at the time of the employment in 2016. Furthermore, all the communications between Mr. Lam and his nanny were made outside of the HelperChoice platform.
HelperChoice encourages Foreign Domestic Workers to know their rights in the country they apply for, either in Hong Kong or in Singapore, by working closely with local NGO s and actively participating in the International Labour Organization (ILO) Integrated Programme on Fair Recruitment. A global project seeking to contribute to the promotion of fair recruitment practices globally and across specific migration corridors in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.
HelperChoice has been acquired by Yoopies in 2019. With this acquisition, the European-based group Yoopies became the global leader outside of the United States in domestic jobs recruitment.
With Yoopies’ support and technical expertise, HelperChoice is now working on a new feature enabling employers to pay domestic workers, who predominantly do not own a bank account, directly through its platform. This innovation will make it possible to control and track the monthly salary paid to foreign domestic workers by their employers according to the local employment regulations. Therefore pushing HelperChoice’s mission to end modern slavery in Hong Kong and Singapore even further.
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