Many people became unemployed due to the COVID-19 outbreak but women domestic workers got the worst hit by the pandemic and there’s no law to protect their financial rights as daily-wage workers.
Thousands of people got highly affected by coronavirus. This deadly disease made many people lose their loved ones and some starved out of extreme poverty due to rampant unemployment it brought.
Pakistan with its struggling economic conditions could not survive the lockdown conditions and this rendered many employed persons unemployed. Due to this fact, the government had to reopen many businesses and now even educational institutions are decided to be reopened.
However, despite a resume in many activities in the country, women domestic workers suffered a lot. As people have stopped hospitality and surrounded themselves in their four walls of a home, they stopped calling women domestic workers.
This is how women domestic workers got badly hit financially by the pandemic and there is no law to protect their financial rights as daily wage workers.
Aurat Foundation helping women domestic workers to deal with Covid-19
Saima Munir of Aurat Foundation under Jazba project has risen up to the task and actively providing food packages to 1,200 women workers in around 40 districts across the country. She said, “This is a project about political awareness but when you can’t talk to these people about rights when they face hunger and job loss [due to coronavirus pandemic],”
“We call for a law to protect financial and other rights of domestic workers, who are currently paid badly and treated inhumanely,” she further told.
A representative of AF told that according to women domestic workers, families suddenly told them to stop coming to work for service and come after lockdown, and these workers did not get paid even in these critical financial conditions.
One of the domestic workers when interviewed she said that she had worked in a family for 12 years and was paid rupees 8,000 per month. “I was stopped from work due to the outbreak of coronavirus and didn’t get a salary. Now, I have resumed work for being the sole breadwinner of the family.”
The protection of the rights of domestic women workers has been called by the rights activists.
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