Any advice?I haven't been blogging much recently because I have been much in demand. Apologies to those of you awaiting emails, but I promise that I'll get in touch this weekend.
Regular readers will be aware of
my unfair dismissal case and to those of you who have enquired about the status of our case, you will be interested to know that we have the first official mediation attempt by
Depnaker, Department of Manpower, on Monday.
Quite frankly, we are not expecting any representatives of the 'defendants' to attend. In fact, we are hoping that they won't because that opens up several other avenues open to us beyond the Industrial Relations Court. The IRC has set a few precedents recently in favour of expatriates recruited locally and as our case is much stronger in terms of documentary proof of intimidation and illegalities, we are obviously optimistic.
And very busy, which is why,
pro tem, I am passing on the following problem, a domestic one, affecting a fellow expat here.
Unfortunately, it is a not uncommon problem among expats here, even among those of us who have Indonesian families (which my correspondent doesn't)..
Your serious suggestions and comments would be most welcome.
J
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Dear J.
Last week we noticed, albeit very belatedly, that our bank account was low. Much lower than it should have been even though we hadn't checked it since early may. yes, we are very slack on this front, the money goes in, we use what we have to, and save the rest. Not being terribly financially inclined, thats the way we have mostly done it.
So, we notice the account is low, start doing an internet check on the account and find that over May and July a total of 29 million rupiah had been withdrawn. This is a huge amount for us, and has really kicked us hard financially.
Then we start to figure on how and where etc. Contact the bank and to cut a long story short, they have agreed to work with the bank whose ATM was used to get the footage of the person who withdrew the money. We have to wait till next week sometime for this to happen.
In the meantime, noticing we were upset when we first found out, our live in nanny of 3 years starts acting nervous. Suspicions aroused, I wait till she goes out, check her room and find a torn up deposit slip for 30 July for Rp.8.7 million, three days after the last amount of 7.5 million had been withdrawn from our account.
How did she get the PIN? Easy. My wife went away and wrote it on a note, put it into my wallet and I very foolishly left it there for a few days before remembering to get rid of it.
So, for conclusive proof we have to wait till next week but I'm afraid she might decide to do a runner before we get to next week, tho we are behaving as if everything is okay and so on.
Do we call in the police when proof is delivered via ATM footage? I'm told by others they will want their cut of anything returned.
Or, should I get in a security guard I know, pay him a commission and get him to question her and get the money back? (We are pretty certain she has banked most if not all of it).
Or should I confront her and demand the money back? Escort her to the bank and get her to transfer the money back to mine? In fact, can this be done? Then just let her go?
Or, call in a dukun (soothsayer) and have him point the finger and get her to return the money?
Or, should we not wait for the final proof and confront her now before she gets cold feet and makes a run for it? If so, how best to confront her?
To make it worse, she is considered to be one of the family, is paid very well, kids love her, we have always treated her well etc etc. It's not as if she has a grudge against us, but I think the temptation was just too much. Thus, in some ways, it is my fault for tempting her and she took the bait unwittingly offered.
Culturally, legally, and morally I'm at a loss.
What do you think? And yes, I've been an ass to keep card and PIN together, but now need to try and rectify the situation.
Hope to hear from you. Soon.----------------------------------------------
I've already talked this over with 'Er Indoors, but as I am still unclear as to how best to reply to my correspondent, so this will have to be a weekend task.
Meantimes, any advice? Please?
Labels: social psychology
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