In an educated, civilized society, we expect every employer and their family members to treat their house help as respectable people because of their hard work — from cleaning to cooking to raising kids, they perform their duties like machines. In addition to assigning tasks based on their abilities, ensuring timely payment of their wages, providing adequate rest periods, facilitating communication with their families, preventing child marriage, and providing emergency support, employers should also equip their house helpers with tools such as education and informal training to foster self-reliance.

But this ideal situation has yet to prevail in Bangladesh even in the year 2024 because most of us aren’t tolerant, sober, friendly, or even civilized when we deal with the poorest sections of society, especially when we manage to buy their labour at a cheap cost. Even if a senior member of a family is fair towards a domestic worker, other members could be hostile or abusive, like what had happened to slaves in the mediaeval period. The absence of prompt and strict steps against psychological abuse, wage discrimination, deprivation of basic rights, physical abuse, and sexual violence for years has made them more vulnerable and exposed the dark side of our society and the State.

Social researchers and psychologists assert that the Bangladeshi patriarchal society is largely ungrateful, discriminatory, and intolerant towards domestic workers as a whole. Yet, it’s shocking that the incidents of abuse occur mostly against dropout or uneducated minor girls.– around 80% of the workforce — who come to cities from poor rural families and are afraid of reporting abuse.

The perpetrators are of all ages and both male and female members of the family. An employer’s house is supposed to be safe space for a permanent or contractual domestic worker as promised during the verbal appointment. Ironically, sadist employers use various tools, experimentally, to abuse their house helps. As a result of their inability to tolerate such abuse and the lack of progress, many girls resort to suicide, while only a small number manage to escape their workplace and pursue legal remedies.

Against a grim picture of minor house helpers, adult women who work in several families for two to three hours a day under temporary contracts, face negative perceptions and uncertainty. They are subjected to physical violence, murder, and sexual assault, including rape as well as human trafficking.

This has to end, and the general perception towards domestic workers must change. Short- and long-term solutions to this social menace lie with the politicians, bureaucrats, courts, law enforcers, workers’ rights groups, teachers, journalists, and parents, but not all the stakeholders are doing their part for the sake of humanity.

The interim government must implement comprehensive measures to include domestic workers in the social safety net, create a separate law under the Domestic Workers Protection and Welfare Policy 2015, mandate written agreements for housekeeping appointments, provide free treatment and legal assistance, direct the police to act swiftly in cases of human rights violations, and urge courts to ensure justice for every instance of abuse and deprivation of basic rights.