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Plans to grant maids benefits in the offing
Some Ugandans wait to be cleared at Entebbe International Airport before they take a flight to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for work last year. Photo | FILe
What you need to know:
- Ms Agnes Kunihira, a Workers MP, who is driving the amendment of the Bill, says the key goal is to provide a safety net for domestic workers. For this to materialise, households with domestic workers will have to be declared as workplaces.
Activists, with support from some legislators, want to enact provisions in the Employment Amendment Bill 2022 to compel persons with maids or domestic workers to remit National Social Security Fund (NSSF) as part of the entitlements.
Ms Agnes Kunihira, a Workers MP, who is driving the amendment of the Bill, says the key goal is to provide a safety net for domestic workers. For this to materialise, households with domestic workers will have to be declared as workplaces.
Ms Lydia Bwiite, the programmes officer at the Platform For Labour Action, told Parliament’s Committee on Gender, Labour and Social Development that this would lift the veil of privacy on such places.
“They not only work behind closed doors, but in a private setting,” Ms Bwiite said, adding that such “private setting in many jurisdictions has a constitutional protection.”
Ms Bwiite told the committee that she wants “the home [to be brought] into the armpit of a workplace” such that it can “be inspected by the officers of the law.”
“A labour officer may—subject to Article 27 of the Constitution—enter into and inspect a premise where a domestic worker is employed for purposes of enforcing the provisions of this Act,” she further said, adding that “the labour officer … shall do so in the presence of a police officer.”
Charles Bakkabulindi, a workers lawmaker, advised that “there must be a proper definition of domestic workers; otherwise we may confuse domestic workers with casual workers, because a domestic worker may be doing some casual work, so we must be clear on the definition in order to attract the proposal.”
As she tabled the Employment Amendment Bill 2022 in July, Ms Kunihira reasoned that defining homes with maids as workplaces would ease inspection by labour officers.
She said: “This lack of express provisions in the law has led to severe exploitation of women and young persons working as domestic workers, including depriving them of their wages, working for longer hours; about 16 to 18 hours per day, absence of proper food and living or sleeping condition, forced labour and being totally cut off from their family members, sexual exploitation by their employers.”
The Platform for Labour Action also suggested that legislators compel employers of maids to grant maids work leave, with proposals made that such days be done on either weekends or in the course of the month-long period.
Leave for surrogates
Meanwhile, Ms Bwiite’s office has also tendered in a proposal demanding that maternity leave of at least two months be accorded to persons who become parents through adoption and surrogacy.
“This is somewhat a new trend and the last time we were submitting this, one lawmaker asked me, ‘why are you making our women lazy?’ It isn’t about laziness,” she said, adding that surrogates and adoptive mothers need to be given time to bond with their children.
In a related development, the Centre for Policy Analysis (CEPA) has also requested that paternity leave to be revised upwards from the current four days to 14 days.
Brighten Abaho, a programme associate at CEPA, noted that while the Employment (Amendment) Bill 2022 was silent about the four days of paternity leave, the number should be revised upwards “to at least 14 days.”
Age limit on maids
Ms Hanifa Katwesigye, the chairperson of Domestic Workers Association Uganda Ltd, also proposed that only persons aged 18 and above be allowed to serve as domestic workers.
Ms Katwesigye opined that this is because some homes subject domestic workers to “hazardous works.”
Domestic Workers Association Uganda Ltd pressed lawmakers to make it mandatory for recruitment agencies or employers of such maids to cover repatriation costs for their employees. This is in circumstances where the maid’s contract expires or when the maid fails to secure work on foreign soil.
This comes at a time when separate arrangements are being made by the government and the National Unity Platform (NUP) to repatriate a vast number of Ugandans stranded in the United Arab Emirates where they sought to do domestic work.
