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by Lionel Wijesiri

Hidden behind the closed doors of thousands of private homes in Sri Lanka, exist a modern-day system of slavery-the abuse and exploitation of domestic workers.

Most of these domestic workers are poor women from remote areas who come to work in the homes of businessmen, mercantile executives, politicians etc. and include cooks, drivers, nannies, housekeepers, gardeners and other personal servants who prop up and provide the underpinning to support their employers' life styles. Invisible and abused, thousands of Sri Lankan boys and girls toil hard as domestic servants to earn a living. In their struggle for a sustainable existence, they are compelled to lead an uneducated life of neglect.

Indeed, because girls are often employed inside these houses rather than in factories or in public, their exploitation tends to have been invisible and therefore ignored altogether. Our politicians and others concerned with "the world of work" have traditionally paid little attention to home based employment, particularly of girls or women employed as domestic servants in the households of others.

Girls work away from home is often fraught with exploitation and danger: sometimes, as in the case of domestic service, it often amounts to slavery and forced labour. Even when not slavery like, the conditions may still be intolerable, having a damaging effect on the mental, physical, social and spiritual development of girls.

Poverty and the hope for improvement in their daughter's lives is a key factor that drives parents to sell, deliver, or send a girl to what they hope is a better life and opportunities they themselves are unable to provide.

Undervalued as human beings, girls are often treated as objects or commodities to be used and abused for domestic labour. Their right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment, in particular beatings and sexual assault is frequently violated.

Most of the incidents do not hit the headlines because the girls concerned do not dare to complain and because such cases are so common that they hardly seem to merit reporting.

Families employing child domestics generally think they are doing something charitable by providing employment to a poor child. Today, employment of young girls as servants - domestic workers - has gone out of control. Girls are being moved to major cities in large numbers, to meet the growing demand. Colombo, for example, recruits many teenage girls to work as domestics from the plantation areas, over 200 kilometres away.

Cases of exploitation have involved domestic workers forced to work seven days a week, often from sun-up to late at night, for a paltry sum per month.

In several instances, workers have been forced to work for years with no pay at all. Violations may extend to far more horrific physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, including the case of a woman whose employer forced her to sleep outside with the family's dogs. These live-in domestic workers inherently occupy a gray space in terms of labour rights.

"Often these employers come from a powerful, elite class, and they are abusing the rights of some of the most powerless," said Dhammika Perera, a researcher and social worker. "This is a serious human rights abuse in our country but it has remained largely hidden from public view. This has to stop."

Vulnerability

Domestic workers are forced into a trap of vulnerability with at least three major aspects:

(1) Vulnerability on the labour market (there are people whose desperation for work is so great that they can be forced to accept, at least some of the time, almost any conditions; employers are able to use both the threat and reality of the availability of desperate workers in any "negotiations";

(2) Vulnerability in the law (this includes the absence of a legislated minimum wage and the exclusion of domestic workers from EPF/ETF)

(3) Vulnerability in civil society and currently dominant patriarchal and market infested thinking ("just domestic workers"; " non-productive workers"; "women's work"; "unskilled work" etc)

Domestic workers are most vulnerable at the point of employment where the employer is free to decide whether to employ her and under what terms and conditions.

Only someone choosing to be blind to reality can believe that this is really a contract determined on a "level playing field" (or for that matter that we are talking about something which resembles a game).

Campaign

There should be a national campaign is working on a two-pronged effort to expose, challenge and try to end this form of domestic slavery. On one hand, it should be involved in negotiations with the Government to get the relevant institutions to tighten up their monitoring and take action against abusers.

In addition, the Campaign should embark on a grass-roots organizing effort to inform and empower domestics and set up a more organized network to provide social services and legal help to abused workers. Only through this dual effort, combining pressure to the top with empowerment at the bottom, can we hope to stop the abuse and exploitation of this hidden community.

The need to build up a social consciousness within our society and to make society aware of the plight of the live-in domestic labour has now become a priority. The understanding that such labour are no longer automatically treated as part of the family and that there are cases of exploitation occurring regularly, needs to be fostered. This awareness raising is considered to be the responsibility of mainly the NGOs.

The responsibility also lies with the lawmakers to interfere with this situation. If it is to change, it has to be changed. There are several areas in which specific steps can be taken to deal with vulnerability more meaningfully:

(1) A binding commitment that there will be a legislated minimum wage for domestic workers ; (2) a binding commitment that domestic workers will be covered by an Act (eg. Shop and Office Act) and thereby be entitled to leave and other facilities.

(3) Regulations covering recurring areas of abuse.

The rights of entry to the workplace of domestic workers for Labour Inspectors must be the same as any other workplace

Role of NGOs

The NGOs clearly have a role to play as well in establishing norms and enforcing them to give domestic workers proper protection.

In Mumbai, India, an organization has convinced employers to allow teenage domestic workers one day a week off and a month of paid holiday each year.

They have also established minimum wage levels for the first time and are urging the government to adopt laws fixing the minimum age for domestic workers as 18 years. In Bangladesh, an organization is trying to establish minimum standards by persuading employers to sign a contract of employment in which their servants' responsibilities - and remuneration and rights - are specified. In Manila, the capital of the Philippines, local organization have helped teenage domestic workers to organize themselves to call for improvement in their working condition - meeting once a year in local park for mutual support and to share their experience.

All over the world, organizations are trying to establish awareness about the minimum standards to be observed when anyone as domestic worker by influencing both current employers and public opinion.

Any legal procedure which is seriously designed to protect domestic workers would have to take account of and deal with all of relevant factors. Today it is a situation riddled with transparent hypocrisy and double standards.

Some of the same employers who shrill about "law and order" systematically ignore even existing inadequate protective legislation when it comes to their own kitchen and backyards. Domestic workers are denigrated as unskilled and doing work which needs no responsibility by some of the same employers who give these workers responsibility daily for caring for their most treasured possessions, their children and their homes.

The contribution made by the domestic workers are trivialised today - when in fact they provide services which are useful and necessary.

In the short term, at least the employers of domestic workers should build respect for the necessary and useful work which their aides do; promote a culture of human rights which prioritises the rights of "the poorest of the poor"; and develop a culture of law and order in which the crimes in the backyards and the kitchens (as in other workplaces and employment relationships) are dealt with as precisely what they are - grave CRIMES.

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