Another Indonesian maid falls to her death in Singapore

Sudden death: An Indonesian maid's body lies at the foot of a Woodlands apartment building in Singapore on Thursday. She fell from the ninth floor.

Another Indonesian maid falls to her death in Singapore, 8th case this year: An Indonesian maid fell to her death from the ninth floor of a Woodlands flat on Thursday, apparently while cleaning windows. This is the eighth incident of a maid meeting such a fate this year. Last year, four maids died this way. The latest incident happened at about 6:20 p.m. at Block 801 Woodlands Street 81. A stool and cleaning materials were believed to have been found next to the window that the 25-year-old fell from.

A first-floor resident, who said he heard a loud thump, looked out of the window and saw the victim lying on a grass patch. "She hit the roof of the small balcony attached to my flat first before falling onto the grass," said the 18-year-old, who did not want to be named. "The sound was so loud, I thought a car accident had happened," added the student. According to him, the two children of the maid's employers were also at the scene and looked very shocked.

Neighbors said the maid had been working for four to five months for a family of four. The couple have a son in secondary school and a daughter in primary school. Neighbors described the victim as small-built and quiet. According to Chinese-language newspaper Shin Min Daily, only the children were at home when the incident happened. On Friday, the parents declined to be interviewed when The Straits Times visited their flat.

In the past five years, 24 maids have fallen to their deaths while working. Some 14 employers have been fined for putting their maids in the way of danger. Contacted on Friday, Halimah Yacob, Minister of State for Community Development, Youth and Sports, emphasized that safety precautions have to be taken. “Employers should look at alternative ways to hang the clothes or clean the windows if it's too dangerous,” said Halimah, who has spoken out several times before about the welfare of maids.

On Tuesday, The Straits Times reported that migrant worker group Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics had started a petition to ban maids from cleaning the outside of windows. When contacted, the Manpower Ministry said it is “gravely concerned” about the recent spate of accidents involving maids. “We will also continue to explore what more can be done with our relevant stakeholders to prevent such unnecessary deaths,” said a spokesman. Police are investigating Thursday's incident as an unnatural death.

Singapore Group Call For Ban On Cleaning Windows

George Williams, Window Washer, Gets Send-Off

To the grassy blanket of souls buried Thursday at the Camden County potter’s field, George Williams lent some panache.

A friend in life, death - Window washer, others buried in potter's field: To the grassy blanket of souls buried Thursday at the Camden County potter’s field, George Williams lent some panache. The singing window washer who was found dead March 11 was laid to rest by the county along with six other indigents at Lakewood Memorial Park in Gloucester Township. But while the other graves were mostly devoid of color or sentiment, No. 2044 was graced with a floral tribute to Williams containing an inset photo of the 69-year-old from a Courier-Post story earlier this month reporting his death. It shows Williams in front of a colorful Haddon Township wall mural with the tools of his trade: a bike with a black bag slung over its handlebars and a white bucket of soapy water. See initial story here.

But along with county workers and representatives of the medical examiner’s office, there were also guests in attendance at Williams’ grave, including musician friend Bill Roccia of Mount Ephraim and Audubon florist Renee Mettinger. The latter has overseen unsolicited donations from businesses and residents that followed publication of the Courier-Post story. The funds will buy a grave plaque for Williams expected to be placed in the next two months. “No human being should be a number,” Mettinger said. “And I’m very thankful that the county has done this.” Williams was known by business owners along White and Black Horse pikes from Pennsauken to Deptford. According to the story, he supported himself with window washing but lived in an abandoned Audubon house. According to Roccia, he died of natural causes.

Friends and acquaintances said Williams claimed to be a long-ago member of the singing group “The Tymes,” whose major hit was 1963’s “So Much in Love.” But the newspaper reported in its April 6 story that the only George Williams known to have been a member of the group died in 2004. At graveside Thursday, Roccia carried an iPad loaded with songs, including one he wrote called “Don’t Know Why.” The sparkling harmony on the song, Roccia says, is George’s. “I met him a few years ago when I was riding my motorcycle and I saw him working,” recalls Roccia, 57. “He would come over my house and we’d grab the guitars and make up songs.” The Rev. Vincent McDonald of Immanuel Baptist Church of Maple Shade donated his time to conduct Thursday’s service at the site, behind a complex of athletic fields. Seven mounds of brown dirt were piled in neat formation. In front of six of them was a plain, blue-gray casket; the other casket was covered with a flower print. All of them were donated by P&J Cooper Funeral Supplies in Barrington.

 The potter’s field contains the remains of about 2,600 people from Camden and Gloucester counties whose bodies were never claimed. McDonald quoted Matthew 10:42 and evoked the essence of Williams’ life when he said, “And if you give even a cup of cold water to one of the least of my followers, you will surely be rewarded.” Because of the friends he made, Williams’ cup was fuller than the others who went to their graves Thursday at a cost to the county of about $250, according to spokesman Dan Keashen. But Williams also had Roccia and Mettinger. To the latter, the sound of two geese squawking overheard was a fitting backdrop for George Williams’ burial. “It just reminded me of what a free spirit he was,” Mettinger said.

The Gloucester-Camden-Salem Medical Examiner's Office buries the bodies of seven people who remained unclaimed by family members on April 26, 2012. Pictured here is a photo of George Williams next to his casket. A small ceremony, performed by Rev. Vincent McDonald of Immanuel Baptist Church of Maple Shade, was held at Potter's Field for Stephen Cohen, Arthur B. Doughty, John Gaughan Jr., Michael McGovern, Charles Rudder, Colista Saleh and Williams.

Regional medical examiner's office buries seven unclaimed bodies: Rev. Vincent McDonald’s heart broke Thursday as he walked toward the seven open graves at Potter’s Field in Camden County, where he would officiate the mass funeral service for Gloucester, Camden and Salem County indigents whose remains were claimed by next of kin. McDonald, pastor of Maple Shade’s Immanuel Baptist Church, realized quickly that his morning funeral service for seven would be before more caskets than there were mourners. “As a pastor, it’s usually such a time to give care to the family. To not have any family around is shocking,” said McDonald, whose Potter’s Field burial service was the first he has ever officiated.

The regional medical examiner’s office holds two burials a year in which about a half-dozen indigents are buried at Potter’s Field, a graveyard behind the Gloucester Township Lions Football Fields. Children who play there don’t notice the grave markers under their feet during pick-up soccer, Frisbee and football games. The seven unclaimed bodies of Michael McGovern, Charles Rudder, Colista Saleh, Arthur Dougherty, John Gaughan Jr., Stephen Cohen, and George Williams — a well-known Camden County window washer — were laid to rest among the more than 2,000 other recorded individuals buried there. The bodies, which have gone unclaimed by next of kin for several months, were strangers to each other, all being buried alone.

Each person interred in the open field behind the Gloucester Township Lions Football Field had a favorite food, a history and someone who recognized their lives as precious, McDonald told those who gathered. “I don’t know all of the days of these lives here,” McDonald said in his 10-minute service, before praying over each casket. “Every one of these lives is one that had days of laughter, had someone in their life who knew their laugh and could pick out it. Each one of these individuals all had personal aspects that were cherished by others ... these are personal lives here that we stand here to remember.”

Only workers with the Gloucester-Camden-Salem Medical Examiner’s Office and Camden County’s public works department, plus a few of Williams’ friends, showed for the short service. “I do truly believe — even though my heart breaks that they don’t have family around them — that what we did in this moment was real,” McDonald said. Of the seven plots, only Williams’ site will have a plaque that marks his grave. The others will get military gravesite markers, flat white stone with a number carved in it. “I always saw him as a just another street person washing windows,” said Bill Roccia, of Mt. Ephraim, who stood beside his daughter Kate looks at Williams’ casket. “Then, I saw him one day, and decided this man had a story, and I wanted to know what it was.”

The Roccias, and a handful of others, were the only attendees not affiliated with the medical examiner’s office. While the small crowd of friends stood around Williams’ casket, the other six caskets sat alone beside the designated graves and the mounds of dirt that would cover them over. “For a minute, I wished I knew all of them,” said Roccia, who played a song on his iPad that he and Williams had recorded together. “They weren’t as lucky as George to have touched so many lives.”

Window Washer Injured In Chain Reaction Crash

2 Hurt When Car Hits Cab, Window Washing Van In River North: Two people were in the hospital Thursday morning, after a motorist slammed into a cab and a window washing van in River North – knocking the window washer right off the scaffolding mounted on top. Around 3:40 a.m. Thursday, the driver of a black Infiniti slammed into the cab at State and Ohio streets. The driver then hit the window washing van, and the scaffolding fell. The window washer was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he was reported in stable condition. A passenger in the cab was also hurt. There was no word on that person’s condition or the hospital to which the person was taken. The driver of the Infiniti told witnesses he was speeding away to get away from someone shooting at him near the Rock ‘n’ Roll McDonald’s a couple of blocks away at Clark and Ohio streets. No one was in police custody as of 5 a.m. Thursday.

Chase sets off chain-reaction crash, washer knocked off scaffold: A BMW chased an Infiniti on the Near North Side early this morning, ramming it and setting off a chain-reaction accident that knocked a 25-foot scaffolding out from under a window-washer, according to police. The chase began around 3:25 a.m. as the Infiniti was headed east on Ohio Street, according to police. It was unclear what started the chase, but the driver of the Infiniti told officers he thought he recognized the driver of the BMW, according to preliminary police reports. The BMW started following the Infiniti and rear-ended it, police said. The Infiniti driver said the BMW driver brandished a weapon and then he heard gunshots, but police have not confirmed that any shots were fired, said Police News Affairs Officer John Mirabelli. The Infiniti continued east on Ohio Street and was rammed again by the BMW, causing the Infiniti to lose control and collide with a taxi near Ohio and State streets, Mirabelli said. The Infiniti’s airbags deployed and the car to lost control and struck a Ford truck owned by a window cleaning service. Either the Infiniti or the truck then crashed into scaffolding where a worker was cleaning the windows of a restaurant, police said. He fell 25 feet to the ground and was taken Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where his condition has stabilized, Mirabelli said. The driver of the taxi was also taken to Northwestern, where he was treated and released. The Infiniti is registered to Carlos Rivera of Palatine, who said he had sold the car to a friend. "He told me he was getting shot at and that’s why he crashed," Rivera said. "He said he was being chased by someone but didn’t know why.” Police are questioning the driver of the Infiniti, but the driver of the BMW has not been found. He was last seen headed east on Ohio. 

A speeding car, apparently racing another vehicle early Thursday, crashed into a cab that hit a hydraulic lift, police said.

Window Washer Injured in Chain Reaction Crash: A window washer and a taxi driver were injured early Thursday after a car speeding down Ohio Street crashed. Two cars apparently were racing each other around 3:30 a.m. when a car struck a cab near State Street, police said. The taxi hit a hydraulic life and knocked a man working on the lift to the ground. The window washer and cabbie were both taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital where they were listed in fair condition. So far, there's no word on charges.

Window Cleaner Mimes Apple To Shame

A Greenpeace protest-mimer cleans a window at Apple's downtown San Francisco store.

Greenpeace Shames Apple With, Um, Fake Window-Washing: Greenpeace has upped the ante in its fight to get Apple to commit to using more renewable energy in its data centers. Or at least it tried to up the ante. About a dozen protesters hit Apple’s store in downtown San Francisco at just after 11 a.m. Pacific on Tuesday. Some of them were dressed as janitors or window washers, others carried black bouquets of helium balloons which they unleashed inside the store, letting them float up to a hard-to-reach second-floor skylight. The environmentalist organization also unleashed a new video, dinging Apple for using dirty energy to clean its cloud (below).

They also hit stores with similar protests in New York and Toronto as part of an ongoing public-relations campaign against data center operators, dubbed “Clean Our Cloud.” After being dinged in a 2011 Greenpeace report, Apple has taken steps to present itself as a serious clean-energy user. The company says that its brand-new Maiden, North Carolina, data center will soon use 60 percent renewable energy — thanks to a state-of-the-art solar array and biogas plant. And just last week, Apple vowed to power a brand-new Prineville, Oregon, data center with 100 percent renewable energy. But Greenpeace wants more. They want Apple to commit to powering their Maiden facility with more renewable energy, even as it continues to expand. Maiden is where Apple powers its iCloud, the fast-growing service that lets Apple users store their photos, videos and other files in a centralized place.

Greenpeace wants Apple to sign long-term contracts for renewable energy in North Carolina, similar to deals that Google set up as it brought data centers in Iowa and Oklahoma online. “If Apple had something like that … that would be something that would give us a lot more confidence in their intentions,” said Gary Cook, an IT analyst with Greenpeace. Greenpeace’s big problem with Apple is the fact that it’s using Duke Energy in North Carolina, a utility that gets 46 percent of its power from coal and another 52 percent from nuclear facilities. The environmental activists are worried that without a commitment to renewables, Apple will simply draw more coal and nuclear energy as it expands its Maiden facilities.

Apple has spent $500 million on Maiden to date, but it is expected to invest another $500 million there over the next 10 years. Apple had no comment on Tuesday’s protests, held on the same day the company announced its quarterly earnings. Company spokeswoman Kristin Huguet referred us to an earlier statement where Apple said that its Maiden data center will be “the greenest data center ever built, and it will be joined next year by our new facility in Oregon running on 100 percent renewable energy.” In San Francisco, the in-store protest was a low-key event. Some store patrons didn’t even realize that a protest was happening. Under a cloud of black balloons, the Greenpeacers stuck posters on the store’s front windows, pretended to clean the store, and handed out stickers and chatted with store patrons as Apple staffers looked on. Greenpeace volunteer Jessica Serranti put in a good 30 minutes of mimed window washing and Apple-store cleaning (get it: “clean our cloud”?) before Apple Store Leader Jason Veilleux pulled down the Greenpeace posters and asked her to clear out. She complied. “It was super cordial,” Serranti said outside the store. Veilleux said he welcomed the opportunity to “engage in dialogue,” with Greenpeace, but declined to comment further. A half-hour after they’d released their balloons, the activists had left the building.   

Thankfully, the extent of the protests today seem to be limited to lots of people dressed in black releasing black balloons inside Apple Stores.

Greenpeace protests dirty energy use at Apple stores: Greenpeace has decided to demonstrate outside a number of Apple Stores around the world today. It’s a protest against what the environmental organization is referring to as dirty energy. With our growing reliance on data centers to power the cloud, the big tech companies have a responsibility to use as much clean and renewable energy as possible. Not only will that reduce the impact such locations have on the environment, it also helps ensure those company’s futures as traditional energy sources continue to rise in cost. Greenpeace points out that Google, Yahoo!, and even Facebook are either pursuing green energy or already using it in ever greater quantities. Apple, however, is not, according to environmentalists, and Greenpeace believes us, the users are the ones that can force Apple to “Think Differently.”

Singapore Group Call For Ban On Cleaning Windows

Singapore Group Calls for Ban on Cleaning of Outside Windows: Singapore - A migrant workers group is calling for a complete ban on maids cleaning the outside of windows. The move comes after seven domestic workers fell to their deaths this year while washing exterior panes or hanging laundry out to dry. The Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (Home) is aiming to collect 300 individually written letters and send them to the Ministry of Manpower. It has gathered 50 so far from Indonesian maids at an event on Sunday attended by more than 200 workers from the country.

Home president Bridget Tan told The Straits Times that the group was collecting letters to show that it was “serious about solving this problem.” She said she would also send this message to 8,000 domestic foreign workers who are members of a private Facebook group. Tan noted that the seven women who fell to their deaths this year were all Indonesians, adding that maids from the country tend to be timid and less articulate than others. This point was echoed by Ristanti Ningrum, the 28-year-old Indonesian domestic worker leading the petition. She said a close friend of hers did not dare let her elderly employer know about her fear of heights, despite being expected to clean the outside of the windows on the 15th floor.

Ningrum said it was easier to communicate with younger employers, but the older ones tend to insist that the domestic workers do what they are told. “I read in the news that there were six deaths in three months, that is two a month. That was when I knew I had to do something about it,” said Ningrum, who is working for an American employer at a landed property. “We are here to earn a living, not to lose our lives.”

On Sunday, Madam Halimah Yacob, the Minister of State for Community Development, Youth and Sports, called for employers to bar their domestic workers from opening window grilles. Maid agencies said Home’s move was a step in the right direction. “It is impossible to clean the outside of the windows without endangering yourself in some way, even if you use the proper tools,” said Eric Lim, director of Jack Focus Employment. However, not everyone was confident that a ban would work.

Benny Liew, director of Comfort Employment, felt it would be hard to police as most employers are not around when the maids clean the windows. “How do you pinpoint who is behind the decision to clean the exterior of the windows if they are caught?” he said. “Often, the helpers are the ones who initiate it without the instructions of the employers, but how do you tell?”

Alvin Tan, who employs a domestic worker from Burma, said that imposing a ban would not prevent deaths. “If you ban the maids, someone still has got to do the job, and the employer will then also be at risk of falling,” said the 46-year-old senior vice-president in an oil and gas company. “This has happened before. The issue is not banning this or that but turning to proper equipment that enhances safety.”

Some Facebook users responded to a Straits Times post on the topic by calling for more safety measures for maids doing this dangerous job. Bridget Xue said, “The real question is to find what safe equipment we can use to clean windows.” However, marketing executive Jeremy Lim from cleaning equipment supplier Karcher said his company does not have any tools made specifically to make it safer to clean the outside of windows. He said this is because Singapore is the only country with such a unique problem.

Meanwhile, some town councils have rejected calls for them to provide mass window-cleaning services. They say they are responsible only for cleaning common areas such as corridors, void decks and staircases. “As windows are not common property, residents are responsible for the cleaning of their own windows, both outside and inside,” said Lee Boon Leng, executive manager at Bishan-Toa Payoh Town Council.

Some residents do turn to professional cleaning companies. However, these firms said there is generally little demand from customers who want them to wash the hard-to-reach spots. “Most of them are very understanding,” said Aisha Shah, the 48-year-old manager of Cleanroom Cleaning Service Centre. “We stick a cloth on top of a pole to reach certain corners but they don’t push us to go full out.” However, there are still rare cases of customers being unreasonable. A sales executive from a cleaning company, who asked not to be named, said: “When they make a difficult request, I will instead ask them, ‘how much are you willing to compensate for a lost life?’”

Singapore Teacher Pleads Guilty to Caning Indonesian Maid Repeatedly: An employer told her Indonesian maid that she would be caned if she made mistakes. After she was caned repeatedly by the employer — who is a teacher — the maid sought help from a neighbor’s domestic worker. The neighbor’s maid noticed the bruises and her employer took the 24-year-old victim to the police.

On Monday, Lee Meng Choo, 54, pleaded guilty to abusing Sri Maryati. The teacher at Junyuan Secondary School could be spared jail, as Senior District Judge See Kee Oon ordered a pre-sentence report to gauge her suitability for probation. Lee suffers from dysthymia, a less severe form of chronic depression. Defence lawyer Subhas Anandan said Jerome Goh of the Institute of Mental Health and defence psychiatrist Tommy Tan had agreed that Lee was unable to fully appreciate the consequences of the offences because of her mental condition.

The lawyer also said the performance of Sri, who was hired in December 2008, was ‘abysmal’ from the start. His client had wanted to send her back to the agency, but the maid pleaded to stay. Lee suggested that she be caned if she made mistakes — the same punishment Lee meted out to her son, now 11. Deputy Public Prosecutor Ramu Miyapan told the court that at 8 p.m. on Aug 9, 2009, the maid was caned on the buttocks for using Lee’s toothbrush to clean the wash basin. The maid denied doing so, but was made to stand facing the front door as an added punishment. Some 15 minutes later, Lee dragged the maid by the ear into the kitchen for clogging up the kitchen sink. Sri’s ear bled.

At about 2:30 a.m. the next day, Lee asked the maid to check her son’s homework. Sri fell asleep, and at 7:30 a.m. that morning, she was caned on the buttocks and back. About three hours later, Lee caned the maid’s palm for setting the alarm clock wrongly. Later that day, Sri sought help from the neighbor’s maid. The case will next be heard on May 23. If probation is not recommended, Lee could be jailed for up to three years and/or fined $7,500.

A cleaner washing away the blood stains at the scene after the body of the deceased was moved.

Indonesian maid found dead at foot of Punggol flat:  An Indonesian maid in her thirties was found dead at the foot of a flat in Punggol Edgedale Plains on Thursday morning. The Singapore Civil Defence Force said it received a call to Block 174C Edgedale Plains at about 5:25am. Paramedics who arrived at the scene shortly afterwards pronounced her dead. According to Chinese daily Lianhe Wanbao, she was believed to be cleaning the windows in the flat when she fell.

Residents said the deceased lived in a unit on the fifth floor with an elderly person. A 64-year-old housewife, who lives at the third floor of the block, said her son heard a loud thump at about 5:20 am. He did not think much about it and continued on his activities. Another resident said that at about 6:30am police had arrived and cordoned off the area. The body was covered with a white plastic sheet and removed shortly. 

According to the resident, who declined to be named, police went from door to door asking residents if there was any one missing from their flats. Shortly, she witnessed an elderly woman identify the body as her maid. Women falling to their deaths when trying to clean windows or hang laundry from high-rise flats are usually reported every year. Just last month, a 64-year-old housewife had fallen to her death from her HDB flat in Bishan while standing on a chair and cleaning a window in her flat.

Between 2006 and 2010, 27 foreign maids have died from fatal falls while washing windows or hanging out bamboo poles of clothes.  Last year, an Indonesian maid fell seven storeys from a flat in Queenstown while hanging the laundry out of the window. In another related incident, a four-year-old boy died last week after a fatal fall from his five-storey flat in Jurong West. Police are still investigating the incident.

How to prevent maids from falling out of windows : There has been many reports of maids who fell to their deaths when cleaning windows or hanging laundry in high rise flats. Employers are expected to be responsible for anything bad that happens to the maids. However, we all know that maids are not robots, they are human beings, which means that if you tell a maid NOT to do something, she may not listen to you.   I have a wonderful maid, but when I told her not to clean windows or hang out laundry, she said : "Nevermind lah mam, nothing will happen lah".  Since I am at work all day, there is no way I can keep watching her while she works. So this is what I did :  I locked all the window grilles in my flat, and kept the key in a safe place so that my maid cannot find it.  There is no way she can open the grilles and she can only clean the interior of the windows.  However, since my service balcony is so small, sometimes my maid still wants to hang laundry outside, even though I told her not to do so. I bought the locks from Daiso as shown in the photo below.  This way the maid can open the window grille so that there is a small gap for her to hang out the laundry, and it is safe because the gap is too small for her body to pass through. Note; that you can get blacklisted if you ask your maid to clean the windows or hang out laundry without safety measures

Minister "Urges No High Rise Window Cleaning" - Singapore

Dicing with death: A Singapore maid leans out of a high-rise window to make sure she does a thorough job.

Don't risk your lives cleaning windows, urges Singapore minister after 7 maids fall to their deaths leaning out of high-rise buildings: A Singapore minister has urged maids to take extra care after a spate of deaths of women falling from high-rise buildings while cleaning windows. Madam Halimah Yacob, Singapore's Minister of State for Community Development, issued the urgent warning after seven women fell to their deaths climbing onto high-rise ledges to clean the outside of windows.

A warning has been sent out to employers in Singapore, insisting that domestic cleaning staff do not have to clean the outside of windows in high-rise homes. Young women are often pictured taking their lives in their own hands by perching perilously on window ledges just to make sure they do a thorough job. Some simply lean out of windows while sat inside the building, but others stand completely isolated on high-rise window ledges with no protective equipment. The hugely dangerous practice has seen seven maids fall to their death this year in Singapore, with the latest fatality coming just last week.

Safety first: Singapore authorities have since demonstrated how cleaners should act, by taking more care and not leaning out of windows. Click to enlarge.

Madam Halimah said employers should drum the message into their cleaners about being careful while doing the windows. She said: 'Once they do that, I think, we will be able to save a lot of lives.' Madam Halimah added that the recent spate of deaths was 'very sad' as many of the maids were young women from nearby villages. She also called for maids to be barred from opening window grilles and employers to keep the keys to these grilles from their cleaners.

Singaporeans have been urged not to insist that their domestic workers clean the outside of windows in high-rise homes.

Latest Indonesian Maid Death Prompts Warning from Singapore Minister:  Singaporeans have been urged not to insist that their domestic workers clean the outside of windows in high-rise homes. Halimah Yacob, the Minister of State for Community Development, Youth and Sports, said on Sunday that there was no need for the outside of windows to be cleaned if they were already clean on the inside. She was responding to reporters’ questions about the seven Indonesian maids who had fallen to their deaths so far this year while cleaning windows or hanging out the laundry.

Speaking on the sidelines of a graduation ceremony for Indonesian domestic workers who had earned academic qualifications at the Indonesian School in Singapore, she called for maids to be barred from opening window grilles and for employers to keep the keys to these grilles from their maids. “They must constantly drum that into the maid’s head - that there’s no need for her to open the grilles, there’s no need for her to clean the outside of windows - and once they do that, they will be able to save a lot of lives,” she said. “It’s unnecessary death, and it’s really very sad.”

Halimah, who has spoken out several times about the welfare of maids and foreign workers, noted that many foreign domestic workers here are from rural villages and thus unused to high-rise buildings. “Having to work in such high-rise buildings is quite a nightmare for them, so we need to take extra precautions to protect them, without compromising the standard and quality of work at home,” she said. She said she was pleased that the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) was looking into the matter.

MOM is improving a compulsory half-day safety-training class for newly arrived maids, which will be part of a new mandatory settling-in program for them. It has also said it will prosecute employers who fail to give their maids a safe work environment. “They want to make sure that these incidents are not repeated because, frankly, there’s no need for our domestic workers to fall to their deaths. We just need to take precautions, particularly on the part of employers,” Halimah said.

Police investigate the death of a 34-year-old Indonesian maid who fell from a window in Singapore last week.

Young Armenian woman falls from window, dies (Yerevan) – An unfortunate incident occurred Friday in Armenia’s Abovyan city, Aravot daily writes. “Varduhi Petrosyan, 24, an Abovyan city apartment resident, fell while cleaning her home’s windows, and she died on the spot. She was living on the sixth floor of a nine-storey building. The neighbors told that she was married and had a small girl. In addition, according to the neighbors, she was pregnant. But this has to be either confirmed or denied by forensic medical examination. The investigation department is preparing a report on the case,” Aravot writes.

Window Cleaners To Climb Walls In The Future?

OluKai Maliko Suction Cup Shoes: Wouldn’t it be rad to be able to dash up walls and walk on ceilings.  Inevitably crime fighting would be a requisite with such power, or at the very least window cleaning. Needless to say, that ain’t gonna happen with these shoes from OluKai, called the Maliko, which boast integrated suction cups in its rubber sole. Unlike traditional shoes, which these are anything but, the Maliko have a split toe design for added dexterity and balance.  The upper portion of the shoe is made from a light weight mesh material that dries out quickly and firmly wraps around your foot using a one pull lace system – no knots required.  That means putting these shoes on, or taking them off can happen in a snap and you’ll never have to struggle with tangles or unlacing in mid stride.

But the real magic lays in the sole.  Based supposedly on an octopus’ tentacles, a set of mini suction cups have been carved into the rubber bottom to provide added traction on both dry and wet surfaces.  We’re a bit skeptical as to how effective they are, but we’d definitely be willing to give them a try, since in theory the divots that make up the suction cups would at the very least help displace the water thus preventing the hydroplaning effect. The Malikos are designed to be fully submerged in water, so in addition to a light weight upper mesh build, the inner sole is removable and water resistant.    A pair are set to cost $100.

Inventor Climbs Building Using DIY Vacuum Cleaner Suction Gloves: I don’t know what to make of this  – real or fiction – but  inventor Jem Stansfield from the show Bang Goes the Theory on BBC climbs the face of a 100′ building using a pair of home made suction gloves crafted from what appears to be a vacuum cleaner and plywood.  He’s roped in (of course) so it’s hard to tell where the majority of his weight is being displaced, but the vacuum’s noise seems to imply that it’s adhering him to the building, sort of like when you vacuum between the cushions and clog the hole with fabric.