House helps and employers sour relationship

She suffered second degree burns on her buttocks, including her private part and was rushed to the hospital where she is presently recuperating while her supposed guardian was arrested by the police. All over the country, it has been tales of woes in the relationship between house helps and their guardians. There have also been […]

She suffered second degree burns on her buttocks, including her private part and was rushed to the hospital where she is presently recuperating while her supposed guardian was arrested by the police.

All over the country, it has been tales of woes in the relationship between house helps and their guardians. There have also been success stories of people who raised house helps, even total strangers, until they also became settled in life.
Despite situations such as this, opinions are divided as to the party with the worst havoc between house helps and their guardians. While some observers say the guardians (madams) are the worst culprit in the maltreatment of maids, others insist it is the maids who commit the worst atrocity on their guardians’ household.
An official of the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), who preferred anonymity, said house helps inflict greater havoc on their adopted homes. She added: “They are necessary evils, but if you can do without them the better.”
The lawyer recalls her experience with a 21-year-old nanny two years ago. She said the agreement was for the nanny to come around by 7 a.m each day for household chores, including babysitting and close by 5p.m, by which time she might have returned from work.
“But I returned earlier than the usual time one rainy day only to find that the girl brought in a mature man to the bedroom. The man knelt down and started pleading that he is a member of the lady’s church who was passing and decided to drop by to inform her that there won’t be night vigil in the church that night. So since then I decided to do away with house helps and I put my child in a crèche,” she said.
Mrs Victoria Haruna, a journalist, also subscribes to the school of thought that some house maids are risky  to keep at home. She said: “Whenever I am nursing a baby I send for my mum or any of my siblings to stay with me for few months until the baby is ready for crèche. I don’t like the idea of getting house helps because of the negative things we hear about them. Rather, employers of labour should consider building crèches in their offices to enable working mothers easily shuttle between work and their babies, without interrupting the flow of work.”
Also speaking, Mrs Uduak Azu, a social worker, said it is not advisable to recruit a house help anyhow especially, those from the ‘villages’ saying: “They can spoil your innocent children in your absence. Worse still, they can start distracting your husband and once this happens, she will no longer regard you as the madam of the house or her guardian but as a rival.”
However, a group of home makers believe house help-guardian relationship is not all about sad tales. They recall the golden days when house helps served their guardians’ families faithfully till they are settled for their own fulfilling lives too.
One of such instances was narrated by Mrs Lovina Agu, a business woman. She said she brought a house help, a niece, after her wedding in the 1980s as was the custom among her people. She said the house help stayed with her to raise her family while she in turn trained her until she completed higher education, got a job with the Abia State government and married. Mrs Agu said she too was a house help in the seventies.
Also in this school of thought is Mrs Juliet Princewill, an insurance marketer, who maintains that the good old days of trust are still here but it is left for the parties, guardian and house helps, to make the house-keeping contract hassle-free. She said she has kept for 10 years a maid she met in Abuja.
“It is all about patience. The house help I have now, though misbehaves sometimes, I treat her like my own child and I have been with her for 10 years. She too has been of great help to me; without her I won’t be doing the job I am presently engaged in because I have in the past resigned from my former job as my children are still tender,” she said.
To resolve the seeming intractable dispute between house helps and their guardians, Mrs Azu advices that domestic maids should be hired through registered agencies as obtains outside the country. She said it is the professional and secured way of procuring house helps who are better trained/oriented by these agencies to carry out their duties in the home. She said the authorities should use legislation to standardize domestic aids as economically relevant professionals in the country.
“You know that to a lot of working people, the family is all they have got after years of work, so you wouldn’t want to bring in someone who will ruin your home, but you still need them to relive you while you engage in your career,” she advised.
To further mainstream domestic servants’ role in the labour sector, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in its 30th session in March, 2008 and the 99th session in 2010 agreed on the need for “decent work” for domestic workers and to regulate the sector to ensure the labour rights of that segment reputed to have over 100 million peoples worldwide, 83 per cent of whom are women.
Experts believe the trouble with house help and guardian relationship can be better managed or avoided if indigent parents, who give out their children in order to make a better life, are empowered economically through micro-credit schemes, to make the better choice for their children. Also, the prospective guardians or home makers are adviced to on their own do proper background checks before the recruitment of the would-be domestic servants.
Such background checks would include the would-be house helps’ level of academics, personal integrity and morality, medical history, including psychiatric state.