Virus hinders employment for nannies

The inconvenience of travel and concerns about the novel coronavirus have made it difficult to recruit nannies in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.

Residential communities have restricted access and people who want nannies have largely complied with the government's advice to stay indoors and limit close people-to-people contact.

Only 20 percent of the housekeeping companies in the city have resumed business since the Spring Festival ended on Jan 30, and only 20 percent of the domestic helpers have come back to work, according to Guangzhou Housekeeping Association.

Many domestic helpers from outside Guangdong cannot come back and many residential communities have restricted access, Zhu Deyi, chairman of the association, was cited as saying by Information Times on Tuesday.

Also, because of employers' concerns about the virus, the demand for housekeeping services has shrunk, with services paid for on an hourly basis especially hard hit, Zhu said.

The demand remains significant though, especially for nannies caring for elderly people, small children and patients in hospital.

Housekeeping companies are recruiting domestic helpers online, but they may not be able to come, and even if they do they cannot receive regular training.

Although the government has arranged chartered trains to help people return to work, domestic helpers live in many different places and can only take such trains if they pass their homes.

Normally, about 500,000 domestic helpers work in Guangzhou, and the city has an estimated demand for about 1 million of them.

The company 51 Housekeepers planned to hire 2,000 domestic helpers this year, but due to the epidemic has cut that in half. Even the new target is hard to fill.

"We hired 40 people in February, but that is how many we hire a day in other years," said Xu Weihua, chief operating officer of the company.

In a survey of 132 member companies of Guangzhou Women and Children Social Service Center on Feb 11, about 65 percent had received less than 30 percent of their domestic helpers back.

The center, which manages a platform for the housekeeping sector, proposed several measures for helping the sector, which include rental and tax cuts, lending support, protective goods supply, venues for isolation of domestic helpers from outside the city, online training and psychological support to domestic helpers.

To help housekeeping companies cope with the impact of the epidemic, Guangzhou's commerce bureau has allocated some masks to those companies and some companies have applied for low-interest loans, he said.

The center has helped refer housekeeping companies to novel coronavirus testing organizations as some families require such tests on domestic helpers.

People can upload their health information through a WeChat mini program and receive a QR code for accessing residential communities.

At a news conference on Feb 26, an official with the Ministry of Commerce said housekeeping associations had been told to give guidance on managing the epidemic.

Local commerce departments were required to coordinate the supply of protective goods and venues for isolation.

Some housekeeping companies were expanding services for cleaning public venues and some were generating revenue from online training, said Xian Guoyi, director-general of the department of trade in services and commercial services under the ministry.

Cao Xiaoqi contributed to this story.