A bill for an act to document and protect domestic workers and their employers scaled through second reading at the Senate in Abuja.

The general principle of the bill was presented at the plenary by the sponsor, Hussaini Babangida (APC-Jigawa).

Mr Babangida said the bill was read for the first time on November 21, 2023, adding that over the years, there has been an increase in the incidents of assaults and abuse of domestic workers by their employers or hosts.

He said the abuses ranged from slave labour to physical assaults and sexual abuses, among others.

He said that, at times, the stories are gory, traumatic and mind-boggling, especially against the background that domestic workers exist in the informal sector.

“They are unionists, and they do not have a collective platform to speak out for themselves and, therefore, remain ostensibly vulnerable and helpless.

“On the other side of the coin is the rise in the state of complicity of crimes committed by domestic workers, mostly in connivance with other criminal elements of society against their employers or hosts.

“These involve burglary, kidnapping, stealing of children, and sometimes outright murder,” he said.

Mr Babangida said that due to urbanisation, fast-growing cities with chaotic traffic in Nigeria, such as Port Harcourt, Lagos, Abuja, Kano and othercities,s have put significant pressure on working-class parents.

This, he said, was compelling many of the parents to spend more time at work and far less time at home.

“The concomitant effect of this is that many families, from the low to the middle to the high-income class, have come to the inevitable reality of the necessity of employing and relying on domestic workers to attend to their needs at home.

“It is saddening to note that a very vulnerable group of this category of domestic workers have been consistently played upon by their employers or hosts.

“These are mostly housemaids, boys, wards and extended family members.

“A lot of these workers are unregistered and not supported by existing national labour laws. They work for private households, usually without clear terms of employment, particularly in our country.”

He said Nigeria had yet to have codified legislation that provided for the rights of domestic workers.

He said it was, therefore, imperative and critical for the 10th Senate to urgently assist the law enforcement agencies with potent legislative interventions by passing the bill.

He urged his colleagues to support the second reading of this bill, as the issue enumerated above was affecting many in society.

The bill received the support of lawmakers and was referred to the committee on labour and productivity for further legislative input.

President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, after passing the bill for a second reading, added that it should be brought back to plenary in four weeks.

(NAN)