It’s a Sunday at a park in Singapore, and, as journalist Zach Hope observed, it’s the servants day off.

They lounge on picnic rugs, shaking off the week of cooking, cleaning – and raising other people’s kids. Singapore has more than 300,000 migrant domestic workers, or “helpers”, as they’re called and many care for the children of expats, including Australians.

Today, South-East Asia correspondent Zach Hope on this extraordinary workforce and the system, he says, is premised on profound sadness.