Maid Dilemma

Every household in our housing area seemed to have at least one maid to help out with their chores. Most of the maids here are PP (pulang-pergi) - meaning come in and leave (do not stay in).

Recently, we employed a maid that we need to pick her up on the way when I go to work and also send her back when I get picked up from work. I believe this is the best arrangement any PP maid would ever have. Normally they arrange for their own transport.

Due to the fact that we were maidless for more than 3 months, we had to "succumb" to this situation in order to get someone in to help out in the house.

This maid is 17 years old. She has stopped schooling and her parents encouraged her to start working. Her father is a becak-man (trishaw peddler) and her mom works in a school as a cleaner. She has 2 younger siblings. They all live in a wooden house not far away from my work place.

My wife had to teach her from scratch since she does not have any prior working experience. Every little thing that she does, my wife had to "supervise" and make sure that she does not make any mistakes. After a week, she is still not performing up to par (keeps forgetting to do the things that we have told her to do, does not do a thorough cleaning job and does her work very slowly).

I could understand how frustrating it is having to tell someone repeatedly about their mistakes and spoon-feed them every little thing that needs to be done. We tried to treat her nicely but sometimes she just gets on our nerves. Our previous maid has more initiative to do things and cleans very thoroughlly. She even had time to study after completing all her tasks. However this one lacks initiative and we don't know whether she is really that slow or just pretends to be slow so that she does less work?

Anyway, it is a true dilemma for us to decide whether we should sack her or not. Where do we draw the line? I have to put into consideration how hard it is to find maids (that are thorough and trustworthy). She is our 3rd maid that managed to work more than 1 week.