Expats pick up slack as housekeepers

Foreigners are taking jobs as housekeepers in local homes to fill the vacancies left by Chinese workers heading home for the Spring Festival holiday, local media reported Wednesday.

A housekeeper placement agency in Pudong New Area has found jobs for two residents of Turkmenistan, according to a report in the Shanghai Morning Post. It was still looking for employers for two others.

One woman from Turkmenistan, a 21-year-old studying at a university in Lanzhou, Gansu Province, came to Shanghai to earn money between semesters. She can speak Chinese and English. "I can do all kinds of housework and baby-sitting, but I cannot do the cooking," she told a Global Times reporter posing as a potential client.

The woman charges 6,000 yuan ($963) a month, about 2,000 yuan more than a Chinese housekeeper's monthly salary. She said she requires more because she can teach children English while baby-sitting.

An agency employee said the foreign housekeepers are quite helpful when there is a shortage of Chinese housekeepers in the city, according to the report.

"It is estimated that the housekeeper shortage in Shanghai during the Spring Festival amounts to 70,000 to 80,000. About half of the city's 500,000 housekeepers have left the city," said Xia Jun, manager of the Shanghai Household Services Association.

An agency employee said it plans to have more Indonesian and Malaysian housekeepers available in the future, according to the report.

"In our building, as far as I know, there are several housekeeper agencies that have foreigners because there are a lot of foreign families in the neighborhood," said a beauty spa owner, whose business operates out of the same building as the agency.

She said she has helped friends find housekeepers. Her friend had good things to say about the foreign workers.

The association does not know the total number of foreign housekeepers in the city, because China prohibits individuals and families from hiring foreigners as housekeepers, Xia said.

According to China's Exit-Entry Administration Law, which takes effect July 1, any family that hires a foreigner who isn't permitted to work can face fines between 5,000 yuan to 50,000 yuan.