Maid

When I first thought of the suitable minimum wage for local workers, I believed that's easy: It should be the same as that we put up for our Philippine or Indonesian maid.

The arguments are simple:

• We could avoid the potential litigation with our overseas maid, who would possibly fire a complaint to the Equal Opportunity Council if the minimum wage is set to be much higher than their present one.
  
• (That is also morally correct - if you believe moral is a desirable character that really exists. After all, if you think a particular wage is too insulting for our local workers, why do you give it to your maid, whom we live under the same roof ?)
  
• It saves all administrative cost - including time and money - for deciding as well as regularly reviewing the minimum wage; it just goes with our maid.
• It simplifies the legislation procedure and save all the trouble of having future lawsuits between employers and employees.

You see the last point ? The ordinance to be endorsed should not be the amount of minimum wage (and all the complicated clauses to follow, where hides the evil), but that we should allow local people to apply for posts as an overseas maid.

PS. The above discussion is, of course, based on the assumption that I agree to the legislation of a minimum wage- an assumption that may not hold water.