Behind closed doors
India’s domestic workers find their voice
It was a regular Sunday morning for the domestic workers of Patna. Though the monsoon rains had suddenly broken out and the streets were flooded with water, about two hundred domestic workers, most of them young girls, had still managed to make it to their weekly get-together, organised by the Bihar Domestic Workers Welfare Trust.
After being given a most amazing welcome, including Indian songs, flowers and garlands, one of them, a shy girl who couldn’t have been older than sixteen, stepped forward and started talking to us about the horrors she had experienced as a young child labourer.
By the time she was ten years old, Sanju Kisku had been working as a domestic worker for four years, changing households whenever her employers sold her on, working day and night behind closed doors for 25 rupees a month. Unfortunately, Sanju’s situation is not uncommon in Bihar - she is one of many domestic workers; girls, boys and women who work 16 to 18 hours a day in the houses of their employers, doing household work which includes cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, looking after babies, children, the sick and the elderly. More accurately, these workers do everything to ensure that the household runs smoothly, so that their employers can work outside the home, visit friends and relatives and lead a normal, middle-class life. They are thus an intrinsically vital part of society, constituting the backbone of middle-class Indian households. Yet they are looked down upon and are forced to remain on the margins of society being, at best, invisible and at worst, desperately exploited and abused.
The state of Bihar does not even recognize domestic workers as labourers and, to this day, they remain deprived of any social or constitutional rights. They are therefore particularly vulnerable to exploitation and are often denied just and due salary wages. Some of them don’t even get basic requirements like sufficient food and a decent place to sleep, and are denied any breaks during the day or days off. Furthermore, they are often subject to harassment by their employers and verbal, physical and/or sexual abuse is not uncommon.
Sanam Minj, a young woman from Jharkand, tells me “I worked for the whole day and night, and was fed stale food. Whenever the employers went to work, they used to lock me inside the house. They treated me like an animal.”
The Bihar Domestic Workers Welfare Trust (B.D.W.W.T), led by sister Maggie, aims to establish a just society for domestic workers by providing them with a security network. It works by registering prospective workers and employers and drawing up employment contracts between both parties. Upon registering with the organisation, domestic workers are taken in and given some training to prepare them for life in the city and the work they’ll be expected to do. Self-help groups and counseling are also provided to support them.
Employers looking for a domestic worker will also register with the organisation, and be required to sign a contract which protects the domestic worker’s welfare, ensuring he or she will receive a fixed salary rate, basic living conditions and fair treatment. The contract also states they should be granted leave on a Sunday to allow them to attend church and classes.
Every Sunday all the domestic workers get together from 6am to 3pm. They attend church and follow classes in which they learn to read and write and are able to continue their studies. “With the help of B.D.W.W.T, I will write my matric board examination this autumn,” an older woman in a brightly-coloured saree proudly tells me.
Workshops are organised around legal aid, gender issues and AIDS awareness as well as vocational training skills such as tailoring, knitting and embroidery. The workers are encouraged to save their money and deposit it in banks, and are given information on life insurance and bank accounts, allowing the domestic workers to become financially self-reliant.
But above all, Sundays mean a break away from isolation and provide these young women with their own identity, and a chance to step out from behind the closed doors of their households and meet other people in similar situations.
Standing in front of all these women, having listened to their brave testimonies, it was difficult not to feel utterly useless. But supporting an organisation like this, which attempts to empower these girls and raise the consciousness of their employers, is a small step in keeping this vital issue alive. And slowly, lives on both sides of the divide are being changed. After a decade of exploitation, at the age of sixteen, Sanju Kisku has finally found a place worthy of living, through B.D.W.W.T. “I sleep in an air-conditioned room with my employer’s daughter, we eat together, and they always support me if I have problems. They treat me like a daughter."
It was a regular Sunday morning for the domestic workers of Patna. Though the monsoon rains had suddenly broken out and the streets were flooded with water, about two hundred domestic workers, most of them young girls, had still managed to make it to their weekly get-together, organised by the Bihar Domestic Workers Welfare Trust.
After being given a most amazing welcome, including Indian songs, flowers and garlands, one of them, a shy girl who couldn’t have been older than sixteen, stepped forward and started talking to us about the horrors she had experienced as a young child labourer.
By the time she was ten years old, Sanju Kisku had been working as a domestic worker for four years, changing households whenever her employers sold her on, working day and night behind closed doors for 25 rupees a month. Unfortunately, Sanju’s situation is not uncommon in Bihar - she is one of many domestic workers; girls, boys and women who work 16 to 18 hours a day in the houses of their employers, doing household work which includes cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, looking after babies, children, the sick and the elderly. More accurately, these workers do everything to ensure that the household runs smoothly, so that their employers can work outside the home, visit friends and relatives and lead a normal, middle-class life. They are thus an intrinsically vital part of society, constituting the backbone of middle-class Indian households. Yet they are looked down upon and are forced to remain on the margins of society being, at best, invisible and at worst, desperately exploited and abused.
The state of Bihar does not even recognize domestic workers as labourers and, to this day, they remain deprived of any social or constitutional rights. They are therefore particularly vulnerable to exploitation and are often denied just and due salary wages. Some of them don’t even get basic requirements like sufficient food and a decent place to sleep, and are denied any breaks during the day or days off. Furthermore, they are often subject to harassment by their employers and verbal, physical and/or sexual abuse is not uncommon.
Sanam Minj, a young woman from Jharkand, tells me “I worked for the whole day and night, and was fed stale food. Whenever the employers went to work, they used to lock me inside the house. They treated me like an animal.”
The Bihar Domestic Workers Welfare Trust (B.D.W.W.T), led by sister Maggie, aims to establish a just society for domestic workers by providing them with a security network. It works by registering prospective workers and employers and drawing up employment contracts between both parties. Upon registering with the organisation, domestic workers are taken in and given some training to prepare them for life in the city and the work they’ll be expected to do. Self-help groups and counseling are also provided to support them.
Employers looking for a domestic worker will also register with the organisation, and be required to sign a contract which protects the domestic worker’s welfare, ensuring he or she will receive a fixed salary rate, basic living conditions and fair treatment. The contract also states they should be granted leave on a Sunday to allow them to attend church and classes.
Every Sunday all the domestic workers get together from 6am to 3pm. They attend church and follow classes in which they learn to read and write and are able to continue their studies. “With the help of B.D.W.W.T, I will write my matric board examination this autumn,” an older woman in a brightly-coloured saree proudly tells me.
Workshops are organised around legal aid, gender issues and AIDS awareness as well as vocational training skills such as tailoring, knitting and embroidery. The workers are encouraged to save their money and deposit it in banks, and are given information on life insurance and bank accounts, allowing the domestic workers to become financially self-reliant.
But above all, Sundays mean a break away from isolation and provide these young women with their own identity, and a chance to step out from behind the closed doors of their households and meet other people in similar situations.
Standing in front of all these women, having listened to their brave testimonies, it was difficult not to feel utterly useless. But supporting an organisation like this, which attempts to empower these girls and raise the consciousness of their employers, is a small step in keeping this vital issue alive. And slowly, lives on both sides of the divide are being changed. After a decade of exploitation, at the age of sixteen, Sanju Kisku has finally found a place worthy of living, through B.D.W.W.T. “I sleep in an air-conditioned room with my employer’s daughter, we eat together, and they always support me if I have problems. They treat me like a daughter."
posted by Development in Action at 10:20
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home