THE Bill to document and protect domestic workers and their employers passed the Second Reading in the Senate on Wednesday, May 8 after its general principles were presented by the sponsor, Senator Hussaini Babangida (PDP Jigawa) at plenary.
The Bill was read the first time on November 21, last year.
Babangida explained: “The intendment of the Bill actually is to raise the issue of the employment, regulation and the management of domestic workers on one hand and on the other hand to deal with the matter of rights of also employers from domestic workers.
“So, it is a two-way Bill that seeks to address the regulation and the operation in the informal sector of the economy.
“Let me just go back to history. In 1998, it was widely reported about a senior flight officer, Hadiza Oboh, of the Nigerian Airways at the age of 39, who was almost approaching the position of a captain, was murdered by her employees and domestic workers, as reported.
“Till date, the culprits have not been apprehended, because record has it that they are workers from Togo/Benin Republic. There are a lot of cases of atrocities committed by our domestic workers.
“On the part of the employers, there are reports of cases of employers maltreatment, including harassment and sometimes killing of workers in their employ.
“Therefore, the intendment of the Bill is to bring the two sides together so that we can have a harmonized and regulated documented and properly articulated approach to domestic employee/employer relationship.
“It is also known that most of the people we employ, we hardly ever know them. You hire a gate man, you don’t know his history, you don’t know his genealogy, you don’t know his background and no record of him.
“So, if there is any issue, you will not be able to trace him. Cases of kidnapping, burglary, house theft, rubbery are the result of internal collusion between the domestic staff and outsiders.”
Babangida recalled that over the years, there has been an increase in the incidents of assaults and abuse of domestic workers by their employers or hosts, including slave labour, physical abuse and sexual abuse, among others.
“They are unionists and they do not have a collective platform to speak for themselves and therefore remain ostensibly vulnerable and helpless.
“On the other side of the coin is the rise in the state of complicity of crimes committed by domestic workers, mostly in connivance with other criminal elements of society against their employers or host.
“These bother on burglary, kidnapping, stealing of children and sometimes outright murder.”
The Bill, which received members’ support, was referred to Committee on Labour and Productivity for further legislative inputs by President of Senate, Godswill Akpabio after it scaled Second Reading.
The Bill is expected to be brought back to plenary in four weeks.
