NEWS reports in a national daily said the Cabinet would approve the Domestic Workers Protection and Welfare Policy-2015 by mid-November to protect around 2 million household workers and make them eligible to all facilities under the Labour Law-2006 which excluded them so far to protect from exploitation. The new policy will ask all local bodies like city corporations, districts, upazilas and union parishads to keep information on domestic workers and ensure their welfare. They may seek social security support for financial and legal assistance from the government run labour welfare foundation in duress under the existing Labour Law.
Bringing domestic workers under legal protection is a right step and highly appreciable at a time when most household workers, mainly female workers are treated like slaves at many houses. They are subjected to beating, torture and sexual harassment and held in confinement often in highly degrading human condition forcing them to work overnight without rest and medical care. Often they do not get regular payment. There is no doubt that the new policy with legal support would work to slowly bring change to their condition. But question is that a new policy is not enough if it is not implemented by the government. The test of the policy will be on how effectively it will be carried out in real life.
As we see our society still inherits many feudal characters and the newly emerged rich in cities appear more cruel in many cases to domestic helps, mainly teenage housemaids. The new policy will set labour standards for them and provide for legal protection. News reports often highlight cases of terrific torture and abuse of housemaids as they take jobs for cleaners and cooking help in affluent families to make a living out of poverty as they migrate from poor rural families. Only recently police put to jail a national cricketer and his wife for brutally torturing a teenage maid for months. News reports on Monday said a judge attached to National Legal Aid Services Organization and his wife brutally tortured their teenage housemaid for more than a year as she was held in confinement to work in the judge’s house at Uttara and his father-in-law’s house at Bashundhara residential area in the city. She fled away recently to bring the allegation against the judge.
In fact these are only few fortunate cases to come to the light but the number of untraced cases run in thousands who need to be protected. What is terrible is that if people like a judge are accused of torturing domestic aid, the door for justice to the victims may not be safe as well. What the nation needs the most at the moment is that media campaign must be highly focused on workers protection to familiarize the people — both employers and workers — about their rights and responsibilities and the risks that await for those who violate workers right.
We want that poor domestic workers must get all protection for an exploitation free workplace. They must get all support to slowly come out of poverty and make a decent life.
