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Can Hongkongers learn how to end migrant domestic worker exploitation on new game-like website?
- Immersive experience by International Labour Organization aims to raise awareness among employers about illegal and unethical hiring practices
- ‘Hiring Challenge’ creators in the city say local bosses and those overseas can all be agents for positive change
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You are a soon-to-be parent in Hong Kong thinking of hiring a migrant domestic worker through an employment agency. But there are thousands of options and you need to decide how to go about it. This is the premise of “the Hiring Challenge”, an immersive web experience launched this month by the UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO) and produced by Rights Exposure, a Hong Kong-based communications consultancy that works with non-profits.
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The experience, starting with a 360° video of a playground in Hong Kong, takes the user through a series of real-life choices to find an ethical employment agency and hire a domestic worker. In each step, the potential employer must make decisions and think about practices that may lead to the exploitation of the worker, such as excessive agency fees.
Robert Godden, co-founder of Rights Exposure, said the goal is “to show what is happening in the agencies, how employers can change things as a consumer and help to reform the sector, which has historically been very problematic.”
The employment agency sector in Hong Kong has been plagued by unscrupulous and illegal practices for a long time. This can include hidden costs for both worker and employer.
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Thousands of migrant domestic workers in Asia have found themselves trapped in a debt cycle mostly due to illegal agency fees. Some agencies do not even hold a licence, and others withhold workers’ passports to make them pay excessive amounts.
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