MOVING DOMESTIC WORKERS TO THE FORMAL ECONOMY

 I woke up  one Saturday morning because it is usually my day-off went straight to the nearby library looking interesting books and magazines to read. Some pepole around call me 'a book worm' because i reading books and journals a lot more anything. Reading books is my everyday food.

However, reading is one of the best hobbies after swimming and travelling. While in the library i can across one magazine called ‘World of Work’ a magazine of the International Labour Organization (ILO), Geneva. As i was going through the magazine i came across a terrible story about a domestic worker from Morocco and she got troubles on doing her domestic work.

The magazine was talking about the decent work for domestic workers. This ILO guidebook promotes the rights and responsibilities of domestic workers; it explains the benefits and risks associated with domestic work.

As I was reading through that magazine I came across a certain article of A-10-Year Old girl called Sara Marbouh of Morocco in the North Africa. She was a domestic worker in Casablanca City, Capital City of Morocco. Her father had to give up work as a result of losing his eyesight and her mother decided that Sara should leave school to help the family earn a living.

“There was no end to it: washing the clothes, washing the dishes, cleaning the house etc. They woke up 6 a.m. but I had to get up before them to prepare their breakfast and I was working the all day and in the evening too, sometimes until midnight.

They all had own rooms but I slept in the kitchen my employer often hit me. One day when I was alone in the house, I went on to the family computer but when my boss arrived, she was really angry. She hit and told me to stay away from the computer and TV in future because they were not for people her background,” reads the part of the story. Now, domestic work (DW) is just a bad memory for Sara, a Moroccan girl who was able to return to school thanks to action by a teacher trade union.

Domestic work differs from other types of work in many respects. First, domestic work does not take place in factory or an office or a farm, but in the home. Moreover, it involves a degree of physical proximity with the employer and her family as well as some emotional attachment, especially when child care or careof elderly people are concerned.

Despite its growing social and economic significance, domestic workers have traditionally been, and still is, one of the most unsafe, low-paid, insecure and unprotected forms of employment. The work of caring and cleaning in the home for pay is most important occupations for millions of workers, mostly women and girls, around the world.

However, the achievement of decent work for DWs ultimately depends on their capacity to organize and engage in collective action hence ground-breaking legislation covering the rights of domestic workers.

A 2006, Tanzania Government study on labour force showed that one in five children between 5 and 17 years of age are involved in some type of hazardous work. For girls, DW is one of the main forms of exploitation. Most of them are taken to the cities by people who have gained their parents confidence by promising wages and schooling.

In practice, they often fall victim to the worst kinds of abuse: working for up to 18 hours a day, beaten and humiliated by their employers, sleeping on the floor, and denied proper food. Child domestic workers earn no more than US$12 a month- if they are paid at all.

Conservation, Hotels, Domestic and Allied Workers (CHODAWU) is trade union which has been campaigning against child domestic labour since it was founded in 1995. It is affiliated to the Trade Union Congress of Tanzania (TUCTA) and International Union of Food (IUF) at international level.

Over 6,000 children have been withdrawn from domestic labour by CHODAWU since 1995.  Awareness –raising campaigns have prevented thousands more from being recruited.

In conclusion, domestic work does not take place in factory or an office, but in the home. Domestic employees do not work alongside other workers, but in isolation behind closed doors, so domestic work is often informal and undocumented.

In an important step to overcome informality let us guarantee them a minimum of social protection by introducing the ‘service cheque system ’. The system facilitates is the calculation of mandatory employment deductions of any assist payment for service rendered to their employers.

This is a typical example of  domestic work done mostly by girls.