SINGAPORE – A maid agency has been ordered by the court to compensate a bedridden elderly woman $1,558 after it was found to have misrepresented a foreign domestic worker’s ability to speak Mandarin when she could not do so.
A tribunal magistrate ruled after a Small Claims Tribunals (SCT) hearing that the agency’s actions amounted to an unfair practice under the Consumer Protection (Fair Trading) Act.
The identities of the woman and the maid agency were redacted in the written grounds of decision issued on June 9. The agency was described as “a migrant domestic worker (MDW) employment agency with several branches across (Singapore)”.
In the decision, tribunal magistrate Leon Abraham Tan found that the agency’s description of the maid’s language abilities was so inaccurate that the elderly woman was effectively unable to communicate with the person hired to care for her.
The woman, bedridden due to a stroke and Parkinson’s disease, speaks mostly Mandarin and understands little English. She needed a maid who could communicate with her.
Her son approached the maid agency around November 2024 to find a helper with experience caring for disabled elderly people and who was proficient in Mandarin.
The agency recommended a Myanmar domestic worker and provided a biodata sheet that listed “Mandarin”, without any qualification under her spoken language skills.
It also sent a video showing the worker speaking in Mandarin about herself, her family and her work experience.
The woman’s son later interviewed the worker over a video call. Believing she could communicate in Mandarin, he selected her on his mother’s behalf.
But when the maid arrived at the family’s home on Dec 11, 2024, it quickly became apparent to him that she “could barely speak or understand Mandarin”, the grounds of decision noted.
The son immediately informed the agency of the problem. It replied via WhatsApp: “(f)resh they Mandarin very simple, pls give her some time for her. if dun understand can use the goegle translation first (sic).”
The son tried to make things work. For about a week, he taught the maid how to care for his mother and used Google’s translation app to bridge the language gap.
But the arrangement soon became impractical. The elderly woman could not use a mobile phone and was unable to operate translation software on her own.
“She could not communicate with her own caregiver,” the magistrate noted.
The son eventually requested a replacement maid. None of the alternatives proposed by the agency met the family’s requirements.
The original worker returned to the agency in January 2025.
In the tribunal hearing, the agency argued that it had been asked only to find a maid who could speak “simple Mandarin”, and that it had fulfilled that requirement.
Its representative added that if the family wanted a maid who was truly proficient in Mandarin, they should have opted for a more expensive package involving workers with experience in places such as Taiwan or Hong Kong.
The magistrate rejected the argument.
He said: “It was far too generous to say that (the maid) could communicate in simple Mandarin. This was because I found (the maid’s) proficiency in Mandarin to be either non-existent or, at best, extremely poor.”
The tribunal examined videos recorded in the family’s home and found that the maid struggled to understand basic Mandarin words such as “hold grandma”, “steam”, “rain”, “cloth” and “tomorrow”.
“The mismatch of expectations vis-a-vis (the maid’s) language abilities was, of course, no fault on her part, but rather due to the (agency’s) far too charitable characterisation that turned out to be patently inaccurate,” the magistrate said.
He also took issue with the agency’s biodata sheet and promotional video.
Listing “Mandarin” without qualification and providing the video would have led a reasonable consumer to believe the maid could communicate proficiently in the language, he said.
The agency, he added, was in a much better position than consumers to verify the skills of workers it recommended.
“As a MDW employment agency, the (agency’s) role is to source for MDWs who meet the requirements of its clients,” he said. “(The) onus is on such agencies to accurately characterise and represent the skills of the MDWs they proffer, lest consumers be misled (whether intentionally or accidentally) into spending money to bring them in, only to subsequently discover that their skills do not match up.”
The magistrate ordered compensation of $1,558, covering losses that would not have been incurred if the family had not been misled into hiring the worker. These included agency fees, airfare and other expenses linked directly to the placement. He also ordered the agency to pay $269 for the costs of the proceedings.
The case took an unusual turn because of the conduct of the agency’s representative during the proceedings.
The representative attended a virtual hearing from a Starbucks outlet at Changi Airport while accompanying another domestic worker, who was due to fly overseas later that day.
The magistrate said that this breached court requirements because the hearing could potentially be overheard by members of the public.
When told to relocate or attend court physically, the representative repeatedly argued with the magistrate.
At one point, the representative said: “You are making things difficult for me.”
The magistrate replied that the problem was of the representative’s own making.
“This court hearing starts at 9am. You are the one who is in trouble, not the court,” he said.
The exchange became more heated when the representative insisted on attending the hearing from his car in an airport carpark.
The magistrate told him: “Let me make this clear. You don’t set the rules here. You don’t dictate to the court how the court functions.”
After the hearing was converted into a physical one, the representative threatened to lodge a complaint against the magistrate.
“I will definitely file a complaint against you,” he said.
The magistrate responded: “Go ahead.”
He added that filing a complaint would not stop him from carrying out his duties. He further warned: “If you’re threatening the judge, that does not seem to bode well for you.”
The representative later filed an application seeking the magistrate’s recusal, alleging bias.
That application was dismissed.
The magistrate described the representative as “the architect of his own misfortune” and found that the recusal application was wholly without merit.
He ordered the agency to pay $150 in costs arising from the failed application.
Concluding the 70-page, 147-paragraph grounds of decision, the magistrate said that while proceedings in the SCT are designed to be informal and accessible to ordinary people, parties must still behave appropriately.
“Informality is not a licence for discourtesy, disruption, or conduct inconsistent with the orderly conduct of proceedings,” he said.
“The SCT is a court of law as it is one of the subordinate courts that make up the State Courts. Thus, those who appear before it are expected to conduct themselves with basic propriety, courtesy and respect for the judicial process.”