By Nasir Isa
Stakeholders on decent working conditions have urged the Federal Government to promulgate a specific, strong and effective legal frameworks that will mitigate abuses against domestic workers in Nigeria.
Speaking duribg a roundtable duscussion on Domestic Workers in Nigeria organised by the Bayero University Kano’s Centre for Gender Studies in collaboration with Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, the experts acknowledged lack of legal framework and weak institutions for the implementation of scattered legislation on domestic work as the major contributing factors to the abuses against domestic workers in the country.
A University Don, Dr Muhammad Nuruddeen, the Head of Department of Public Law in BUK, in his presentation noted that since poverty and illiteracy are the major factors pushing more people, especially women and children into domestic servitude, there is the need for a visible and proactive institutional mechanism to ensure the implementation of the laws as well as capacity building for domestic workers to let them know their rights.
According to the legal luminary, over 83 million people are in the domestic work sector worldwide with women and children the majority, especially in Nigeria, yet there is “No specific legislation at the national level regulating domestic work. What we have are scattered laws. They are not in a single document. But despite some of these provisions in different legislations, rights of the domestic workers are denied.”
Also speaking, Professor Sani Lawal Malumfashi of the Department of Sociology in Bayero University who spoke on the role of stakeholders in mitigating abuses against social workers, advised that the only panacea to the lingering problem is for ministry of education at both federal and state levels ensure that all school-age children in the society are enrolled in schools while the Ministry of Labour and Productivity should have a directorate on informal sector employment for proper regularization and documentation of informal works in the urban sector.
In their separate addresses, the Vice Chancellor of the institution, Professor Sagir Adamu Abbas, said the program was part of the efforts towards providing a decent and just society with every one has equal rights.
He said the Management is always ready to partner with organisations in a bid to ensure a descent society.
Earlier, the Director of the Centre for Gender Studies, Dr. Suwaiba Sa’id Ahmad, who was represented by Prof, Aminu Muhammad Dukku while noting the aptness of the topic, adding that despite their importance, domestic workers face a lot of challenges, including low wages, extra working, long working hours, lack of holidays and sometimes sexual exploitation, physical abuse, ill-treatment and lack of welfare, and BUK is concerned with the welfare and wellbeing of all humanity, especially the vulnerable.
