Domestic helps deserve better

Increasing deaths of domestic helps following physical torture have become a cause for serious concern. A rights activist has claimed that the posh areas in the capital have earned the dubious distinction of inflicting more torture on their domestic workers than other areas of the city. Many such barbaric incidents of physical repression and even death go unreported because the moneyed and influential employers can manage the matter well before the media and the law of the land can get into the process. In fact, domestic helps are at the receiving end -- both in life and death. Sure enough they deserve better for the service they render. Unfortunately, their labour goes unrecognised -all because theirs is a job in the informal sector. At a time when household works accomplished by housewives or women in general have been measured in economic terms, the labour put in by domestic helps may as well be measured in such terms. And the size of that economy all over the country is likely to be quite big.

If this reality is given due cognisance, there is no reason for leaving the draft Domestic Worker Protection and Welfare Policy unapproved for a long time. The draft was prepared as far back as 2010 but it is yet to be approved. The Jatiya Garhasthya Nari Shramik Union, which has been advocating the cause of welfare for domestic workers, has every right to complain that torture on such workers cannot be arrested because of the absence of any legal instrument. Why the government is sitting on this issue is incomprehensible. Even the provision of submitting a picture of a domestic help with some rough details to the local police station is not complied with. It leads to a whole lot of complications when a domestic help usually of tender age goes missing. It is in the interest of the employer that such a record of the domestic worker should be maintained. The fault actually lies with the mindset of the employers. To them their domestic helps are hardly anything but a lower species, who deserve no liberty.

This is exactly where society should act fast or else, its entitlement to the civilised tag will be seriously compromised. For the job to be recognised as paying labour, though, there is a need for training. In case of underage children, this is again very tricky. After all, child labour is illegal. But when necessity drives young ones to give labour to an affluent family either in cities, towns or villages, some kind of orientation for adaptation with the new environment away from parents and play mates is certainly called for. The Domestic Worker Protection and Welfare Policy should play a vital role in this regard. There is no use playing the ostrich; rather to avoid unrelenting tragedy, some set-ups should be put in place so that domestic workers can better adapt themselves to the new environment and enjoy access to a watchdog body in case s/he is tortured or otherwise maltreated.