Elderly care is skilled work, and Hong Kong’s migrant domestic helpers should be recognised for their skills

Daisy Tam says care work should not just be seen as a labour of love, and a proper recognition of the skill requirements of the job would not just be fair, but also – when the carers feel appreciated – result in a higher quality of care

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A woman visits her elderly mother in a care home in Tuen Mun. The demand for elderly care in Hong Kong outstrips the supply of affordable care options, and “ageing in place”, where elderly people live in their own homes, is seen as a solution. Photo: Edward Wong

Published: 6:17am, 18 Jul 2018Updated: 1:56pm, 30 Jul 2018

“Care work, both paid or unpaid, is crucial to the future of decent work,” states the International Labour Organisation in a recent report. Care work is the bedrock of economic growth, as well as contributing to the well-being of individuals and society.

However, this type of work remains mostly invisible and unacknowledged; whether caring for a baby or cooking for a sick parent, domestic care work has often been confoundingly regarded as a “labour of love”.

Care work is work. Anyone who has taken care of a child, sibling, parent, friend, ill or in good health, would recognise the time and skill requirements, opportunity and financial costs, and the physical and emotional investment. Skills vary, but often, it requires some form of knowledge, be it medical, culinary or linguistic, in addition to emotional labour.

The ILO estimates that, globally, 16.4 billion hours are spent in unpaid care work every day, and when valued on the basis of an hourly minimum wage, it would correspond to US$11 trillion, equivalent to 9 per cent of the global gross domestic product.

As Hong Kong braces itself for the impact of an ageing population, the care industry is a crucial sector for sustainable development. In less than two decades, the population reaching retirement age will have doubled, with only half the population in the workforce, and 2.37 million people (31 per cent of the population) potentially needing care.