Even if your sponsors are bad, do not blame the children, says maid

“I believe that if the maid is a mother, she should feel that any child she takes care of is like her own, and she should take good care of him or her," said Kenyan Verinah Miloya.

DUBAI // Verinah Miloya, a mother of a 10-year-old son, works for a Jordanian couple with three children. Her sponsors are good people who treat her well, she said.

But she added: “Even if they were bad, I could never harm the child.

“I believe that if the maid is a mother, she should feel that any child she takes care of is like her own, and she should take good care of him or her. Imagine someone doing the same to her child – she will then feel the same pain she would cause to the parents of a child she hurts.”

Ms Miloya, 31, arrived in the UAE from Kenya at the start of last month and had worked for many families with children before.

“One family I remember were not good to me at all,” she said. “They used to scream at me all the time, blame me for any sickness that happened to their children.

“Sometimes they called me names like ‘stupid’ or ‘dog’, and at times they would throw food at me. But I never hurt their two children, one who was four and another nine months.”

She said she sat down with the mother and told her she no longer wished to work for them, took her final salary and left.