Who protects the househelp?

By Doreen Hammond
The recent story in the news about the molestation of a house help to the extent of burning her back with a hot pressing iron and breaking her legs was very pathetic.
It is not as if the plight of the house help has ever been good but this particular story of such inhumane treatment to someone whose job is to help the upkeep of home, defied human reasoning.
This 19 year old house help was said to have been locked in a toilet and brought out occasionally for further maltreatment. If this had happened in the days of Kunta Kinte in the film Roots, I could have believed it but in 21st century Ghana? Well, the Police are investigating and it will be interesting to know the outcome of the case.
The phenomenon of keeping house helps who used to be referred to as maidservants, maids or house girls is not a new one. It became very common when women began to take on multiple roles as home keepers, workers and breadwinners and started working outside their homes . With the gradual erosion of the extended family system which used to provide support for the nuclear family, the house help became a savior to most homes.
In addition to this , the present economic situation most families find themselves in has made the services of the house help even more necessary. The house helps take on the role of helping to care for children, washing, cooking, ironing and doing general household chores as mother and father leave their homes very early in the morning in search of money for the payment of school fees, high electricity bills, water, to buy food, clothes and pay for shelter.
In spite of the critical role house helps play in homes, their general conditions of service have remained poor. They don’t have much of a choice as to what to eat with some getting gari after pounding mounds of fufu or even sharing the meals of the dogs. To top it all up, house helps do not have the many liberties that the household enjoys yet they are expected to be the first to wake up and the last to go to bed irrespective of the fact that they have no proper sleeping places and they enjoy no medical cover.
From some village and with no idea about the people she has been brought to live with , the house help is supposed to quickly adjust , shirking off her initial psychological fear of the unknown and get down to duty.
The case of those who are old is much better than that of children who should be in school but have become house helps because of the difficult economic situations in their homes.
In the some homes their general appearance easily give them away for what they are—servants, in spite of the term house help that has been coined for them recently. Either they are wearing some over sized dresses, or you find them in an old kaba belonging to madam but with a different kind of skirt or slit which does not match. You could still argue that they are better of being in such clothes than the tattered ones they had in the village.
In verbal contracts signed with parents or their guardians, moneys may change hands but hardly is such money felt by the house help. The house help is the beast of burden. Promises of a better life and even education are often left at the very place they were made.
In homes where there are unscrupulous and henpecked masters with madams who seem a little bit on the heavy side , some of these house helps end up warming the beds of the master yet master still draws the whip at the slightest opportunity to avoid detection.

Though this situation seems to be changing, with some families putting house helps into trade and school after a stipulated period of service, how many house helps have such luck?
The country has seen the springing up of some agencies which recruit people to serve as house helps in homes. These agencies collect moneys for placing house helps not only from the employer but the house help too. She has to send a part of everything she earns to the agency. Here again it is the house help who gets fleeced of the little she makes from her toil and sweat.
These agencies give the semblance of a well organised institution. There are forms to be filled and contracts to be signed and passport pictures but the contract signed is no guarantee that a house help would stay with you till the expiration of that contract. These agencies claim to charge so much because they train the house help. But it is very difficult to tell what kind of training they get especially with house help brought from the village in the night and given away by morning.
These agencies are not able to guarantee the character of the house help because they do no background check of the house help they give away. In such cases the house help could leave the home with valuables and there will be no means to trace her.
The primary aim of these agencies therefore is not to provide service but to make moneys from both the house help and the one who hires her.
As humans, house helps cannot be said to be without their own short comings. Even with those who work on an agreed allowance, their whole attitude to work is as though they are doing a favour to their employer.
On a daily basis their duties have to be spelt out to them and they would always deliberately cut corners like sweeping only parts of a room they have been assigned to, breaking glasses and other kitchen equipment out of sheer carelessness and show a general lack of concern for items in the home because they don’t feel a part of it. Laziness and petty theft cannot be disassociated from them.
In even more serious cases, stories have been told of how house helps have abused children left in their care by even going to the extent of introducing them to sex.
Looking at the way things are going, house helps are going to be part of the family system for a very long time to come. It is a matter of demand and supply.
The industry of house helps and their working conditions cannot continue like this. If they are being hired to work, house helps must necessarily be of the age of consent, and there must be modalities and laws put in place and enforced to see to it that they are not exploited. They must also be made to understand that there are rules governing their work and they must provide the services they are being paid to provide.
At the end of the day it should be a win-win situation for the house help, the family and the agency.