(IPS) feature

Almost immediately after she came to Singapore to take up a job as a domestic worker, Janet's husband back home in the Philippines moved in with another woman. Since then, her mother has looked after the couple's two children.

Last year, the family began to worry that Janet's younger son was hanging around drug addicts, but her elder son entered college this year to study marine technology.

Through much of the twists and turns of her family's life, 34-year-old Janet has been away from the Philippines, but she says she has come to terms with the physical distance with her teenage sons.

But while she is physically in another country, much of her energies in terms of sticking to her work and her future goals remain directed toward home.

As for her personal life, Janet, who married at 15 and had two children by the time she was 18, has had a few boyfriends in Singapore, though she says she does not want to marry anyone.

Janet says she may be there for a few more years to see her children through university. Then, she will go back home with some savings.

Looking back to her life before in the Philippines, she says it was very different from her life now. "In the Philippines life was boring, I depended on mum for everything. I came here because I wanted to be independent, have fun."

But "at the same time I wanted to help in my kids' education", explains Janet, one among some 70,000 Filipinos doing domestic work in Singapore's city state of 4 million people.

Adjusting to new life

Janet's story is not too uncommon. Indeed, many Filipino domestic workers grapple with adjusting to life apart from their families, including seeing marriages break up and children grow up without their presence.

Father Angel Luciano, chaplain for Filipino migrants in Singapore, says that infidelity happening when one spouse is in a foreign land is something he has come across time and again in the course of his work among 30 Catholic churches across Singapore that serve the Filipino community.

He adds that with the mother outside the Philippines and father busy with his work - and perhaps his other woman - the children have at times gone astray, some even becoming drug addicts.

For 39-year-old Catherine Co, even her husband's infidelity back home has not deterred her from working in Singapore to send money home for her children's education.

When she came to Singapore in 1990, her two daughters and son were very young - the eldest was six and the youngest just one year old. Her eldest daughter, now 18, is taking a tourism course in university and working part-time in a department store in Manila.

Her husband, who was a drug addict, moved in with another woman after she left for Singapore and both of them now live in the same house with Catherine's children.

Help with expenses

"Last year when I had money, I made the house up nicely for them. Every month I send money directly to the children and recently when my husband had a stroke, I helped him with expenses," explains Catherine.

She has gone back to the Philippines thrice, on two-week holidays, since working in Singapore. "I have to work here until all my children finish their studies," she says.

The determination to stay on for their families' sake - and putting their personal lives on hold - also seems to be a common thread among foreign domestic workers.

Take the case of Judith, who holds a double degree in science and commerce and education and who has been a domestic worker in Singapore for 10 years and earning around US$200 a month. She used to work as a teacher in the Philippines for 10 years.

"The salary of a teacher in the Philippines is 3,200 pesos (US$64) a month. My husband was also a teacher, but both of our income wasn't enough to pay for the house, food, clothing, education of our children," Judith said in an interview. "I came to here for the future of my children, at least to give them a good education."

Her elder daughter, 22, has just graduated with a degree in accounting management and now works at the governor's office in a central Philippine city, Bacolod. Her 16-year-old daughter is in university.

"It's been worth it coming to Singapore to work, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to give a good education for my children." says Judith. "I'm looking forward for the future of my children, not myself."

Cope with difficulties

The importance she puts on this was such that she was able to cope with the difficulties that came with adjusting to work in Singapore..

"The first three weeks I came here, it was horrible. She (my employer) shouted here and there, 'Quick, quick, hurry up. Do it this way. You stupid, stupid'. We are not brought up that way. We are a soft-spoken people," Judith said, recalling her initial experience with her employer.

For many Singaporean families, having Filipino domestic workers also brings added benefit. Because a good number of them hold university degrees from back home, many Filipino workers also act as tutors of their young wards, checking up on their homework after school when the mother returns home late from work.

Some may call such migrant labour professionally exploitative, and others may even argue that having mothers sacrificing for the greater good of the family is gender discrimination.

For many Filipinos such questions are best left unanswered, since their main concern is the economic survival of their families back home.

But Mariam Cuasay, labour attache of the Philippine embassy in Singapore, says that one cannot make an issue out of highly qualified Filipinos working as domestic workers because there simply is not enough jobs available in the Philippines.

Standard wages

Luciano agrees that it is poverty back home that is the push factor for Filipinos coming to Singapore for domestic work. But he argues that fellow members of Asean must work out some form of standard wages across the region.

This, he says, would help remove the need for their nationals to work overseas in huge numbers - more than 800,000 Filipinos leave every year to work in foreign countries. "This will make it unnecessary for people to move abroad to work, thus breaking up families," he explains.

Indeed, Luciano encourages Filipino workers to also save for the time they go back home so they can lead independent lives. "I tell them here, please save and don't send all the money to the Philippines," he says.

Luciano's advice to the domestic workers is this: In your first two-year contract, pay off your debts, and in next two years, save as much as you can. For the third term, save everything and get as much capital and skills as you can for the eventual return home to begin some business.

To this end, he has helped set up vocational training programmes in churches. The courses are usually conducted on Sundays, when most domestic workers have their days off.

"These are skills development and personal enrichment, not qualifications for jobs," explains Benjamin Manalo, a Filipino information-technology professional who co-ordinates the training programme at the Novena Catholic church.

Catherine already plans to set up her own business with money saved and has completed courses on her weekly day off in typing, baking, cooking, sewing and business studies. Currently, she is doing a beautician's course. "If my children finish their higher studies I will be very proud ofmyself," says Catherine, who plans to return to the Philippines in three years.

As for herself, Catherine says she has received marriage proposals from many Singaporean men, but turned them down. "I don't want to get married, I want to be a good mother to my children."