Senate Seeks Agency to Document, Protect Domestic Workers, Employers

May 8, 2024

A bill that seeks to create an agency to document and protect domestic workers and their employers on Wednesday, May 8, scaled second reading in the Senate.

This followed the presentation of the general principles of the bill by the sponsor, Senator Babangida Hussaini (PDP Jigawa) at plenary.

Hussaini in his lead debate noted that over the years, there had been an increase in the incidents of assaults and abuse of domestic workers by their employers or hosts.

According to him, the abuses ranged from slave labour, physical abuse, and sexual abuse, among others.

He said sometimes, the stories were gory, traumatic, and mind-boggling, especially against the background that the domestic workers existed in the informal sector.

“They do not have unions 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 borders on burglary, kidnapping, stealing of children, and sometimes outright murder”, Hussaini said.

He said due to urbanization, fast-growing cities with chaotic traffic in Nigeria such as Port Harcourt, Lagos, Abuja, Kano, and other cities had put significant pressure on working class parents of different categories of society.

This, Hussaini said, had compelled many of them to spend more time at workplaces and far less time at home.

“The concomitant effect of this is that many families, from the low, middle, to the high- income classes families have come to the inevitable reality of the necessity of employing and relying on domestic workers to attend to their needs at home.

“It is saddening to note that a very vulnerable group of this category of domestic workers have been consistently played upon by their employers or hosts.

“These are mostly housemaids, boys, wards, and extended family members.

“A lot of these workers are unregistered and not supported by most national labour laws, they work for private households usually without clear terms of employment, particularly in our country,” he said.

He said Nigeria was yet to have codified legislation that provides for the rights of domestic workers.

He said it was therefore imperative and critical for the 10th Senate to urgently assist the law enforcement agencies with potent legislative interventions by passing the bill.

“In view of the enormous benefits of this bill which has been elaborately deliberated in this lead debate.

“All of you know one house girl, mechanic, and one driver, somebody somewhere who needs our help in this chamber. I want to urge you to support the second reading of this bill,” he said.

Senators in their contributions supported the bill and approved that it be read for a second time when it was put to voice vote by Senate President, Godswill Akpabio.

Akpabio, thereafter, referred the bill to the Senate Committee on Labour and Productivity for further legislative input and to report back to plenary within four weeks.