The saga of discrimination against domestic helps

One of the most crucial yet neglected services in urban conundrum is that of helping hands in households. According to a report, the total number of such workers in the world is 70.60 million. In Bangladesh, the figure of such helping hands is not documented but guesstimates have it that the total may vary from 2.5 million to 7.5 million. This wide gap in the figures of house helps alone is a rude testament of the neglect or even abuse they are subjected to.

At a workshop arranged at the National Press Club by the Bangladeshi Ovibashi Mohila Sramik Association (BOMSA) to review the existing guidelines for protection of housemaids and devise action plan for ensuring their security, some startling revelations have been made. Of the house helps who stay with the house masters' or house ladies' families, 80 per cent are underage girls. The plight of this working class women and girls is highlighted by a lack of written contract for 95 per cent of them for the service they render. Clearly, among the labourers in the informal sector, the domestic helps are given the worst treatment. This is hardly surprising when 72 per cent of garment workers, according to a recent report, do not have any appointment letters. 

Abuse and maltreatment of those domestic employees are widespread. In the worst case scenario, they are subjected to mind-boggling brutality and oppression. Some of these involve such brutality as scorching the tender body with hot cooking spud or confinement in bathroom without food for days in addition to slapping and beating. These are so heart-wrenching that the incidents, once disclosed, draw public outcries. The other deplorable form of abuse is sexual abuse leading to killing of the victims. Between 2011 and 2021, as many as 629 house helps lost their lives due to torture and killing. In 2022 alone, 15 such workers were killed and 18 were left grievously injured.

A survey carried out in 2019 by the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS) corroborates this horrendous service status and repression meted out to the domestic workers. According to it, 95 per cent housemaids are subjected to repression by their employers. Of them 21 per cent are subjected to physical torture, 61 per cent to verbal abuse. The problem is with the feudal mentality that the employers harbour in them. No work is undignified, least of all the very service domestic helps render. The job of sweeping, cleaning and processing of fish and meat is so indispensable that without the service, housewives and career women in families would just be at their wits' end. Yet the job is not given the recognition it deserves. 

 The wage for the labour is too petty to help them lead a modest life. There is no surprise that the temporary house helps have to live in slums where they, more often than not get dehumanised. Up to 20 or more families or single women have to share one toilet and bath along with a two-burner gas oven, if they are lucky. Some have to use kerosine stoves. Unhealthy and unhygienic living condition and the surrounding environment are made even worse in the monsoon when water flows right through the muddy slums or even overflows the drains to flood floors.

They are forced to live in such conditions for a variety of reasons. The main reason is their insufficient income. Another study the BILS carried out last year reveals 84 per cent of domestic helps live below the poverty line. That such an overwhelming proportion of house helps earns less than Tk5,311 a month shows how pitiable their financial condition is. They are marginalised because their wages are outrageously low.

Yet what brings the best in them is their sacrifice and contribution to their families. A study recently carried out by the BOMSA under the auspices of the Oxfam in Bangladesh and the European Union (EU) finds that 32 per cent of domestic helps earn between Tk4,000 and Tk5,000. The study then finds that 45 per cent of them are the breadwinners of their families. What a laudable role they are playing! With their paltry income they bear the expenses of their families. Some of them barely keep their bodies and souls together by setting aside the minimum possible portion of their income and sending the rest to their families at home. Thus they fall victim to malnutrition and diseases.

This is indeed pathetic that the labour law does not cover domestic helps' employment or service. The guidelines formulated in 2015 are not honoured because there is no legal basis and those are not mandatory. This gross injustice should not be allowed to continue for long because this would perpetuate social discrimination. The marginalised women are more discriminated against than their male counterparts because a large number of them are abandoned often with children by their husbands to fend for themselves. There is a need for legal protection of such women and an effective deterrence to polygamy at this level of society. Otherwise the number of street children will rise and disunity and discrimination will continue to vitiate society.

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