Nuclear families living in urban and peri-urban areas, have come to depend heavily on domestic help, with the collapse of the joint family system and the absence of grandparents or relations in urban apartment blocs. The families do not have any secondary family support systems, at various stages of the children’s growth, right from child birth to adolescence, as was available in the traditional Goan village. This leaves the nuclear families solely at the mercy of domestic help, whether from inside or outside the State.
As witnessed in the casual labour and handymen sector, the demand for domestic help has created a mafia which supplies domestic help to these urban and peri-urban families. Since the families are in dire need of someone, especially to take care of their infants and toddlers, they fall prey to the ‘domestic help inter-state mafia,’ which ranges from individuals to organised rackets. The middlemen, who virtually act as labour contractors, do not carry any papers pertaining to the domestic help’s birth records, residential or parental details. Sexual abuse and violence against these domestics, mostly girls, by contractors is not ruled out.
Sometimes, the families may not even know from which state the domestics are trafficked. The families are stressed out with their own schedules, and do not have time or resources to trace antecedents of the domestics. Initially the domestics came from the local SC/ST community from the vicinity, then from Karwar, Sawantwadi and now from Bihar and Orissa.
The Centre has enacted the Domestic Workers Welfare and Social Security Act, 2010, under which the Central Advisory Committee, State Advisory Committee and District Boards are the implementing authorities. The act specifically bans the employing of minors as domestic labour and registration of domestic workers is mandatory to control trafficking and other forms of exploitation. Every employer has to provide particulars of domestic workers engaged directly or through an agency to the District Board in a prescribed form and pay fees. Those who supply domestic workers to any employer have to be registered under the Act. The service provider has to maintain records of all domestic workers.
The working conditions are also notified under the Act –no employee shall work for over 9 hours a day or over 48 hours a week. Overtime has to be paid at one and half times the average earnings. Work period of any employee shall not exceed five hours without 30 minute break. Every employee, will be entitled for a weekly day off. Additionally, the State government has to notify the minimum wages for domestic workers.
In the absence of the State Advisory Committee and District Boards creating awareness about the provision of the Domestic workers Welfare and Social Security Act many abuses persist in Goa –the biggest being employment of minors as domestics.
There are many persons, including professionals such as doctors, lower court judges, media persons at whose homes minors are employed and often being abused. This happens since the domestics and their families are in dire economic need. The violence and abuse is not voiced and even if it comes in the open, as happened in the past, the cases are hushed up. The issues come to light only when some neighbour or NGO complains. Often these complaints are more out of personal animosity, rather than to uphold the rights of the minors. Otherwise, the general neighbour is apathetic to the plight of domestics who are beaten regularly.
The supply of domestics is not without costs to the local families. Often the young girls from other states are minors since they come to work to save up money for their marriage, or schooling, especially if they fail a year. Secondly, the contractor/supplier has to be paid a commission of anything between Rs 3000 to Rs 6000 per domestic. There have been ample instances where the girls have left the job after 15 days or a month, without informing the owners, at the instance of contractors, who then employ them elsewhere in the state so that they gets another commission. If the girls pull on with the family, the contractor does not benefit. Thefts, in such cases is not uncommon.
True the government has many things on its plate, but eliminating child labour and regulating of domestic help for welfare of the domestics themselves and the families in Goa should certainly be on its priority list, since children’s rights and security of families are paramount in any scheme of things.
