Domestic workers

The Employers Federation of Pakistan have noted ensuring safe working conditions for domestic workers

Workers’ rights groups have been calling on federal and provincial authorities to strengthen and reinforce laws pertaining to domestic workers. While labour conditions in Pakistan in general are often subpar, due to a combination of lack of enforcement from the state and low investment from industry, the situation is even more pronounced for domestic workers, who may be deprived of their rights to leave, fair working hours, and health and safety.

Meanwhile, the fact that it would be almost impossible to do wellness checks on every single household with domestic workers leads to a situation where none are checked until it is too late and domestic workers have already fallen victim to the working conditions or to a serious crime at the hands of their employers. The lack of inspections also means there is no practical way to stop child labour — despite cases of abuses regularly occurring, the practice remains common.

Even among employers who offer better working conditions, wages are often an issue, as employers may place an unfairly high value on room and board to offer wages that are too low for the employees to sustain their families, especially in the cases of migrant workers. The new code of conduct recently launched by civil society and rights activists aims to address low wages, poor working conditions, harassment and various forms of abuse by setting up or strengthening the legal framework needed to achieve these goals.

The Employers Federation of Pakistan and other groups have also noted that ensuring safe working conditions for domestic workers is a way to increase women’s participation in the workforce, as many women are unable to work in formal sectors either due to lack of education and training, or social factors. This also underlines how, despite being part of the ‘informal’ sector, domestic work can be critical to pulling families out of poverty, as it offers opportunities to do honest work for honest pay for women who have few other options to earn money to help support their families.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 29^th, 2024.

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