Domestic help has always been needed and so the hiring of house-helps is not new.
The services house-helps render include cooking, stewardship, doing the laundry, car washing, gardening, baby-sitting, driving, cleaning and other general services. In Nigeria, their services are mostly patronised by the middle and upper classes.
People hire either male or female domestic help, depending on the requirements of the work they are needed for. Some live with the family taking them on, while others resume work at the homes of their employees in the morning and leave when they are done in the evening.
Some house-helps are fortunate to enjoy certain privileges from their employers like being sent to school or set up in a trade or business. Then again, there are many sad tales of those who end up being abused – sexually and otherwise, oppressed, trafficked, exploited and suffering serious injustice and infringement on their human rights.
Cases abound of house-helps being overworked and underfed, made to sleep and live in very poor conditions, beaten mercilessly for the slightest mistakes and verbally and mentally abused.
The maltreatment of house-helps has always been an issue. The question is, why are house-helps so often victimised??? According to Godwin Etefia, a media executive, “It is because of the suspicion that house-helps could act in a manner that is inimical to the household. As a result, most masters or mistresses see their house-helps as an unnecessary evil.”
Chukwuma Ikegwani, a financial expert, says, “House-helps are not treated well for the following reasons: men generally are self-centred and selfish. They take house-helps as ordinary tools bought and brought into the home, which they use as other household machinery to achieve what they want, without any human feeling for their predicament. Some hirers, who are most times arrogant, use class distinction and social status to mete out inhumane treatment to house-helps, as if they are sub-human, while they are superior beings. They treat house-helps with disdain. The myopic reasoning of some masters is that if house-helps are treated well, like their own children, they will in the future take advantage of them.”
Mrs. Ekpa, a nurse stated that, “The reason some house-helps are treated inhumanly is because they come in with a bad attitude and character, which negatively impacts on the family financially, morally and spiritually. Some of them are found to be seducers of the head of the family or the manager of the home, which is the wife, while others have been discovered to be rapists, thieves and kidnappers. In fact, they conspire to perpetrate heinous crimes against their masters. Some of them use diabolic powers to cause havoc in the family they are working for.
There are those who are lucky to receive favours from their masters. It depends on the perception of their masters.”
Bede Nwokoye, an architect, in his response to the question of the ill-treatment of house-helps says, “It is because the house-helps are not taken as part of the family. They are seen as strangers, who therefore do not deserve what other family members enjoy. House-helps are often treated unjustly and victimised because they do not have anybody to defend and protect their rights. Also, they are ignorant of their rights. Another pertinent issue is that they are not organised under any body that would protect and fight against injustice and oppression from hirers. ” ?
It is disheartening to see the inhuman treatment meted out to house-helps. Does it mean that house-helps are not contributing to the progress of their masters? Are they always evil? Do they deserve the treatment they most times receive? Why are they caught in such a web of victimisation?? ?
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