A bill that would provide for the documentation and protection of Domestic Workers and Employers of Domestic Workers in the country has passed a second reading in the Senate.
If passed by the National Assembly and assented to by the President, the bill will nip in the bud cases of assaults and abuse of domestic workers in Nigeria.
Sponsored by Senator Magnus Abe (APC Rivers South-East), the bill does not only seek to protect the domestic workers, but aimed at protecting the employers of domestic workers, adding that a lot of workers are unregistered and not supported by national labour laws.
Leading the debate, Abe explained that at the end of the day, the Federal Ministry of Labour and Productivity is expected to provide the documentation and protection of domestic workers as well as employers of domestic workers in the country adding that this would in the identification and numeration of domestic workers.
The Senator who noted that over the years, the country has experienced an increase in incidents of assaults and abuse of domestic workers by their employers or host, said that they bother on slave labour, physical abuse and sexual abuse.
Noting that there was also an increase in the spate of complicity of crimes committed by domestic workers mostly in connivance with other criminal elements of society against their employers or host, he said that “This borders on burglary, kidnapping, stealing of children, and outright murder.”
Speaking further on what prompted the bill, Senator Abe explained that urbanization, fast growing cities with chaotic traffic in Nigeria such as Port Harcourt, Lagos, Abuja, Kano and other cities have put significant pressure on working class parents of different categories of the society compelling many to spend more time at work places and far less at home.
He said that a case in point, “is the apprehension of the kidnap kingpin AKA Evans by the Nigerian Police who had been employed severally as driver to his victims. And most recently the reported case of the gruesome murder of one Opeyemi Badamasi, Chairman of Credit Switch Technology Company in Lagos by his 22-year-old Togolese cook.”
