Formalising labour

In a welcome move, Sindh Assembly has finally approved and passed the Domestic Workers Welfare Bill 2025 that aims to safeguard the rights of household workers whilst protecting them against exploitation and mistreatment. This new law sets regulated working hours, bars child labour and mandates rest breaks, medical care and written employment contracts - a significant step for what has always remained a largely informal industry.

Household employment in Sindh – by the way, in other parts of the country too – has historically existed in a legal vacuum. Most workers are unregistered; therefore, the employers remain unaccountable. The Sindh Home Based Workers Act of 2018 was a similar attempt at legally recognising home-based workers, but it failed to achieve widespread implementation. While there is still a waiting period for this bill to be passed by the Senate, it seems wise to be adequately cautious about its implementation this time around.

As always, the loophole is enforcement. The bill's Dispute Resolution Committee places the burden of complaint entirely on the worker. Within highly sensitive power dynamics, a domestic worker is unlikely to report their employer for fear of retaliation or losing an income source, and there is no whistleblower protection in the bill that would ease these fears.

The bill also requires an employment letter to be submitted to a labour inspector. The ground reality of household employment must be understood. Employers in this economy - a lot of whom are housewives - have never been monitored before. It seems that the labour department has not been given an increased budget or staffing to begin monitoring now, and citing lack of resources seems like a fairly easy way to escape this mandate.

A social safety net must complement this bill to fix what is fundamentally a poverty problem. This includes expanded income support, legal aid and anonymous reporting channels. Without these, Sindh might just be revisiting 2018.