Recommendations for domestic Help/domestic help agencies in Delhi-NCR

[movingmom]

Hello to all of you wonderful women out there,

I have just R2Ied to India. Am still in my home state Kerala but will be moving to Delhi in the next month or so. I am 6 months pregnant right now and have a 3 and a half year old in tow. Our grand plans of hiring full time help from Kerala itself has been disastrous. There is some sort of crisis in finding domestic help here which I wasn't aware of. So now we are moving on to Plan B and looking for domestic help via agencies in Delhi. The problem is we haven't got any recommendations for any agencies yet. Can anyone here recommend an agency thru which we can hire good reliable help? Basically it will be for cleaning, may be some light cooking and emergency grocery shopping (if I am unable to do so myself). Already it looks like the husband will be at the office early morning to late at night and may be available only on weekends. SO the onus of looking after our three year old, hunting for schools etc will fall on me. My parents will be here to help during the baby's birth but won't be able to come here prior to that to help me settle in. Any help in finding good reliable help will be greatly and deeply appreciated.
Thanks in advance and have a great holiday season.

[RBee]

You might get the help you are looking for in R2I main section as this section is not used much (I didn't know that when I joined).If NCR Delhi area help is like Noida,there is one woman member from India called r2inoida who posts in main forum but never in this section. I saw that member dbs is in Noida area too (based on London meeting thread) and he might offer suggestions.
If you are looking just for Delhi, there is a diary by a lady called pm071 who might help with your request or shku2005 in Gurgaon which is close to delhi too ( This suggestion is based on diary section and whether they still participate not sure) , But 'r2inoida', 'dbs' for sure as I see them post even now. You should also look whether there are NCR-Delhi returned members under list posted by pm071 but looks like only dbs and r2inoida are active.

[r2inoida]

Hello to all of you wonderful women out there,

I have just R2Ied to India. Am still in my home state Kerala but will be moving to Delhi in the next month or so. I am 6 months pregnant right now and have a 3 and a half year old in tow. Our grand plans of hiring full time help from Kerala itself has been disastrous. There is some sort of crisis in finding domestic help here which I wasn't aware of. So now we are moving on to Plan B and looking for domestic help via agencies in Delhi. The problem is we haven't got any recommendations for any agencies yet. Can anyone here recommend an agency thru which we can hire good reliable help? Basically it will be for cleaning, may be some light cooking and emergency grocery shopping (if I am unable to do so myself). Already it looks like the husband will be at the office early morning to late at night and may be available only on weekends. SO the onus of looking after our three year old, hunting for schools etc will fall on me. My parents will be here to help during the baby's birth but won't be able to come here prior to that to help me settle in. Any help in finding good reliable help will be greatly and deeply appreciated.
Thanks in advance and have a great holiday season.

Congrats on your pregnancy. Lets us connect offline. i am in the same boat. Have you chosen a gyne and a hospital for yourself.

On the domestic helper front, I dont want to discourage you, but you will have a tough time time finding a domestic helper through agencies. I tried that route for sometime. Most of my friends havent had a good experience. Most agencies provide you a helper and take their fees of 15-20 k and invariable 1-2 weeks later, the maid wants to go back or worse still runs away. Then these agencies take ages for replacement and for replacement they would not give you many choices, mostly untrained maids at the same salary which you hired the first one. In the meantime, they place your runaway maid with another family, make their money and the circle of running away continues.

I have heard of this same story from 7-8 friends.
In the end, with a lot of difficulty, I have found a reliable lady from my domestic place. My experience with the agnecies was also not very good. One agency told me that they would charge initial 20k for the placement fee and 7 k salary for a fully trained maid. They said, they wont let me talk to the maid alone. Fine, I agreed to interview her in front of them. It turned out, she just knew how to cook rice. She dint know how to operate the gas or iron. Worse still, She didnt even know how to mop the floor, when I asked her, she said, she is used to mopping the floor with cowdung (a prevalent practise in remote rural areas).Since I am working and pregnant, I didnt have the time to train her. Most of the girls that they they bring in as helpers are underage girls which which I had an issue. I wanted an elderly lady in late thirties or early forties. None had somebody available in that age group.

Most of the girls that these agencies bring for interview are fresh off the boat from the village without any household work skills and they try to pass them off as fully trained helper with city experience.

Lets us connect sometime and talk. I am based in Noida. I will PM you my contact details.