Asean urged: Give domestic workers protection

IT IS time for all Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) governments to value the rights of domestic workers, the International Labour Office (Ilo) urged on Monday.

In a statement two days before the 10th Asean Forum on Migrant Labour (AFML) on October 25, Ilo Assistant Director-General and Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific Tomoko Nishimoto urged Asean governments to tweak their laws and policies to provide domestic workers “the same protection as all other workers.”

“It is time for all employers of domestic workers to recognize that domestic workers are neither servants nor ‘members of the family,’ but workers that should have the same rights as other workers,” she added.

Often called as the “largest invisible workforce,” Nishimoto said there are almost 10 million domestic workers in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, more than two million of which are migrant domestic workers.

“In fact, domestic workers make up nearly 20 percent of all migrant workers in the Asean region. The vast majority are women,” she added.

Despite this, she said labor laws in most Asean member states do not apply to domestic workers, thereby “excluding them from the protection provided to other workers such as social security benefits, minimum wage and limitation in working hours.”

Citing an Ilo study in 2013, Nishimoto said 61 percent of all domestic workers in Asia were entirely excluded from labor protections, and only 3 percent enjoyed equal protection with other general workers.