Domestic workers living in penury: Study

Visakhapatnam: A recent study conducted by Prof John Koti of Andhra University on the socio-economic conditions and social security of domestic workers in Andhra Pradesh, as part of a University Grants Commission project, found lack of recognition, poor wages, harassment and abuse, lack of defined work time and no regulatory framework.
Prof John, who reached his superannuation last month as a faculty in the human resources management department, chose Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Kakinada, Rajahmundry and Tirupati, for the study named ‘domestic workers -conditions, rights and social security – a case study in selected urban areas of Andhra Pradesh’. About 500 domestic workers from each city, totalling to 2,690 workers, were interviewed for the study to understand the conditions of the domestic workers.
Koti said several children, too, are engaged in domestic work. “Being a part of the unorganised employment sector, the majority of the domestic workforce cannot negotiate their nature of work and wages. The study identified several issues in the sector including undervaluation of domestic work and its contribution to society, low bargaining power of domestic workers, and frequent exclusion from labour protection,” he said.
He said domestic work is one of the emerging important avenues for people, who are unskilled and lowly educated.
“The domestic workers contribute to the economic growth in the sense that it enables more and more educated women to enter labour market as a result of which they outsource this task formerly which is assigned to “housewives” to hired domestic workers. But at ground level, it may be an empowerment to the housewives who go to work, but not for the majority of the domestic workers whose work is not even recognized and not covered by laws. Several employers view them as mere servants and there are no terms of agreement, which also means that they may be exploited at the extreme level and they may be hired or fired at any point of time. Hence, a decent work, minimum wages, and privileges at the workplace is the need of the hour for these domestic workers,” said Prof John. As per the study, about 20-25 percent of the respondents from the selected five cities earn less than Rs 2,500, while only some 12-15 percent of the study subjects earn more than Rs 5,000 a month.
From Kakinada region, the majority of the respondents are aged between 25-45 years. Whereas, the majority of them are in the 35-45 age group in Rajahmundry, Tirupati and Visakhapatnam regions.
With regard to gender of the respondents, among all the regions, majority of them are females as compared to male counterparts. The majority of the respondents are from the scheduled castes, followed by backward castes.

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