Last Thursday, domestic workers mostly women from Delhi assembled at Haiderpur to celebrate the international domestic workers’ day under the Caritas India Pravasi Bandhu program. The event was hosted by Partner NGO Nirmana, under the Pravasi Bandhu program on June 16, 2022. Around 60 domestic workers and their leaders participated in the event.

Sharing the situation of migrant domestic workers, Mr. Subhash Bhatnagar, Director of Nirmana, said, the domestic workers are given minimum wages, denied any social security, work without paid leave/weekly leave. He informed that after much struggle and effort, the government included domestic workers under some laws such as POCSO.

The vulnerability of domestic workers is embedded in the nature of their work – typically undertaken behind closed doors in private homes with a lack of legal protection. While domestic workers are important to support for the smooth running of houses and indirectly contributes to the larger economies, as a workforce they remain one of the most vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

In one of the Tilak Nagar residential places in West Delhi, domestic workers were kept without payment and engaged round the clock. Apparently, the house belongs to one of the ministers who has given them a servant quarter to live and taken responsibility of their children’s education. These vulnerable people don’t realise that when they get old and leave their job, they will not have any savings nor any money to support their homes. Mr. Subhash pointed out the importance of being together and fighting for their rights and ‘decent work’ of the domestic workers.

Mr. Deepak, Program Associate from Caritas India shared about the importance of the domestic workers’ day and shared that domestic worker play a significant role in the development of urban society. He said as a care worker you should always feel proud for being the supportive hand in building the economies of the nation.

Ms. Suparna, Associate – Data Analyst of Pravasi Bandhu program shared about the newly designed mobile App developed for the benefit of the migrant workers. She explained the objectives of the mobile app and the impact it would have on the life of the domestic workers. She shared about different features of the App which will help the register, track and support the migrant workers at both source and destination.

A discussion on SHG formation was led by Sam Blaze from Shimla and Chandigarh diocese. He shared the importance of SHG with added advantage of savings to manage petty requirements of the household. Various SHG leaders from the domestic worker’s group participated in the meeting, though they are new and had not yet opened accounts in the bank. They clarified several points regarding SHG and shared their difficulties in opening an account for SHG in a bank. The outcome of the discussion was to know the possibilities of how to link with a bank and Sam blaze assured that he would provide a reference of a bank so that a bank account can be easily opened. Mr. Deepak added a larger perspective of SHG formation which happened in Andhra Pradesh, and he told that SHGs take various activities for poverty eradication and can able to create new sources of income. Some SHGs have a turnover of 450 crores.

The International Domestic Workers event was also organised by other partners including Chetanalaya at Jahangirpuri, Delhi, Kunkuri Chattisgarh and Banswara Rajasthan.
These events discussed the issues of workers and the possibilities to form women’s groups to sort out their issues. Altogether, more than 300 women workers participated in the events held at different locations.

The events were able to reflect the strategy to fight for the social issues that domestic workers face in the existing systems and it is important to develop a policy that takes into account all the important issues of the domestic workers.