The housemaid is a common fixture in most middle-class households in Bangladesh, a constant presence who works tirelessly to set hot meals at the table, and cleans and organizes the messes left behind by the family while subsisting on the bare minimum. Her rest hours are often nonexistent, she has no days off.
It goes without saying that her health is of no concern to her employers unless it hampers her working in the kitchen somehow. Thus, through neglect and abuse 81 percent of housemaids in Dhaka, Sylhet, Khulna, and Chattogram have poor physiological conditions, and only 1 percent receive paid maternity leave. Additionally, 76 percent do not receive social security support at work. This data came up from a study conducted by OXFAM Bangladesh over three months in 2022.
Additionally, the study found that 75 percent of live-out domestic workers lived in slums with only one room for living quarters. This means that these women rely on shared toilets, where they have limited running water and risk infections. The study, titled “Decent work and intersections with VAW/GBV: A study on Domestic Workers in Bangladesh“, was conducted by the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS), in collaboration with Dnet, Oxfam, and Global Affairs Canada. The study was conducted by surveying 465 domestic workers, including live-in and live-out, and 150 employees based in Dhaka, Chattogram, Sylhet, and Khulna.
M Shahadat Hossain, co-founder and executive director of Dnet — who presented the study at the event — said, “Nearly 80 percent of domestic workers do not get any social security services.“
Additional Secretary and Advisor to the World Bank ABM Khurshed said each and every domestic worker should have their NIDs so that they can be identified easily.
Domestic workers are left out of the Bangladesh Labour Act, which means they face challenges in obtaining formal employment recognition due to their exclusion. Informal employment means there is no proof of employment, oftentimes verbal contracts are used and are unreliable by nature, so a domestic worker facing abuse or delays in payment has no recourse to seek steps against the employers.
The poor salaries of housemaids also mean medical treatment for their health is also out of reach for many. These women have no choice but to suffer in silence. It is high time the health rights of the domestic workers in Bangladesh need to be addressed.
