In an interview with FMT, Santiago spoke of a need for laws to ensure that maids are not made to work long hours, that they are given medical care and that they are given at least one day off every week.

“We treat them like slaves by making them work 24 hours a day instead of thinking of them as employees,” he said.

“Ensuring that labour laws cover the rights of housekeepers is something that we should really push the government to look into.”

He said another cause of abuse was the frustration of employers over their maids’ lack of training.

“Part of the problem is that the maids are ill-prepared,” he said. “You don’t expect a maid from Cambodia to know how to cook Malaysian food without training.”

Santiago noted that the issue of maid abuse had not been given much attention lately although there had been a rise in the number of cases, including deaths.

“Maids from Cambodia in particular have faced the brunt  Lots of them have returned to their country in body bags,” he said.

The Borneo Post reported yesterday that maid abuse was rampant in Sarawak and that some maids were treated like slaves.

The paper quoted a spokesperson for the Indonesian consulate in the state as saying that the consulate had to shelter 666 Indonesian workers between 2012 and 2015. He said there were probably more cases of abuse that were not reported.