Racial discrimination and abuse of domestic workers in Hong Kong
Every state party to the current Covenant takes on to value and to guarantee to all persons within its region and subject to its control the right identified in the current covenant, with no distinction of any type such as race, color, creed, cast, sex, language, belief, political or other opinion, national or communal origin, birth or other position. (Pacis, 2008).
Racial discrimination, discrimination and chauvinism against immigrant workers in Hong Kong are forced both by long-standing legislation and rules and by Hong Kong culture in common. This is true of immigrant workforce in numerous sectors in common but in mainly the lowest remunerated group – the foreign domestic workers (FDWs).
Even though the description of ethnic discrimination in the Race Discrimination Bill section 8 is in line with article 1 of the global Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), of which the Hong Kong command is also a national party, we on the other hand find that some requirements in the bill are in disagreement with the meaning of race discrimination of the bill itself, particularly when it comes to handling foreign domestic workers.
Types of discrimination
1. Targeted Discrimination
2. Compound Discrimination
3. Structural Discrimination (Mickles, 2001).
Recommendations
1. Take on a holistic approach in barring all forms of bias by increasing the extent of the bill to comprise discriminations based on religion, political, language or other judgment, property, origin or other position. (Croatia, 2000).
1. Take in immigration legislations, in mainly the Immigration Ordinance and rules for appraisal and alteration in order to pass these legislations and policies constant with the new anti ethnic discrimination legislation. Without them would make a ridicule of the claim of defending foreign employees in Hong Kong.
2. The Equal Opportunity Commission should be granted with authority to extend the visa of the foreign personnel occupied in a dispute. This would really improve the probability of foreign workers really finding restore for the infringement of their human rights and safeguard their self-esteem.
3. Evaluate the Employment Ordinance, the Immigration Ordinance and the Social Welfare Ordinance in light of the human rights violations practiced by fresh immigrants, racial minorities and immigrant workers. The sections of Social Welfare, Employment and Immigration need to set up counseling bodies to help generate more effectual mechanism to pursue on human rights violations.
4. Evaluate, modify and where required, eliminate Foreign domestic Workers related policies and offers, mainly the rule of New Conditions of Stay, Two-week regulation and the scheme of tax and execute a proportion on FDWs and the charge on FDWs employers to get them regular with anti-discrimination.
5. Eliminate the discriminatory visa procedure that rejects the Nepalese the right for employment in Hong Kong. (Anonymous, 2007).
6. Offer more effectual available, multi-lingual and ethnically/gender- responsive channels for immigrant workers, particularly FDWs to be proficient to report without delay violations, counting underpayment, to the Labor and Immigration sections.
7. Sustain the right to union by further guarantying immigrant workers working for immigrant organizations and unions will be provided employment visa without bias. (Ally, 2002).
Reference
Ally, S. (2002). Racial Discrimination against Migrant Workers in Hong Kong. March 20th, 2009. Retrieved from: http://www.thinkcentre.org/article.cfm?ArticleID=1628
Anonymous. (2007). Race Discrimination Bill. March 20th, 2009. Retrieved from: http://www.legco.gov.hk/yr06-07/english/bc/bc52/papers/bc520303cb2-1226-5-e.pdf
Croatia, Z. (2000). Gender and racial discrimination Report of the Expert Group Meeting. March 20th, 2009. Retrieved from: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/genrac/report.htm
Mickles, L. (2001). Domestic Abuse: Organizational and Employee Impact. March 20th, 2009. Retrieved from: http://www.newfoundations.com/OrgTheory/Mickles721.html
Pacis, R. (2008). Discrimination of Migrant Domestic Workers in Policy and Practice: Findings from Asia and the Pacific. March 20th, 2009. Retrieved from: http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:ialMZfkRYVcJ:www.icgmd.info/sessions/session_2_2/pps_roland_pacis.pps+Racial+discimination+and+abuse+of+domestic+workers+in+Hong+Kong&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=pk
