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Tanzania: Adopt ILO Convention 189 in Local Labour Laws

Tanzania: Adopt ILO Convention 189 in Local Labour Laws

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by IDWFED published May 12, 2013 12:00 AM
Apart from supporting the Ministry of Labour, workers and employers associations to familiarize themselves with the Convention 189, ILO Dar es Salaam office has been working with these key partners towards its ratification. Immediately after its adoption, ILO Dar es Salaam worked with CHODAWU, an IDWN affiliate, to familiarize Members of Parliament on the convention, allowing domestic workers themselves to reach out to Parliamentarians.

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Read the original article in full: Tanzania: Adopt ILO Convention 189 in Local Labour Laws | AllAfrica

Story of Jane Joseph

With a screaming baby strapped on her back, the 16 year old who was too young to curse, continued to fill the 20 liter bucket from the slow running tap.

Ragged and looking dejected, she had a tired look on her and this could be testified by her slow laboured movement when she lifted the bucket on her head, one look at her will reveal the tired lines on her young face. Jane Joseph is a domestic worker in one of the lavish houses in Bunju B on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and at only 16 years of age, she had been working as a house help for two years running.

"I usually wake up at 4:30 am every day, and I have to prepare Jimmy (the oldest son of her boss) for school before embarking on other duties in and outside the house," she says. Her duties include cooking, cleaning, feeding the baby and deal with the constant hassle of water shortage, which in such a case involves moving water from the outside tap which is connected to a water well into the house.

Domestic work and labour laws in Tanzania

Domestic services, which embrace domestic work and domestic workers, comprise an array of services performed or undertaken by individuals toward a household or households. This category of work and workers started from time immemorial and only crystallized in the United Republic of Tanzania on the advent of private property.

In Tanzania there are many families in urban areas where housemaids are employed to assist with household chores or with handling duties linked to the upbringing of newly born or young children.

The International Labour Organization's adoption of the Domestic Workers Convention of 2011 and Recommendation No. 201 in June 2011 marked a significant milestone towards protection of domestic workers and also guaranteeing them decent work, the latter embracing good working conditions such as better pay, regulated working hours and social protection.

"Although labour laws for Zanzibar and Tanzania seem to define what domestic work is, it is submitted that the law is not clear as the ILO Convention No. 189 on what domestic work is, says Annamarie Kiaga, the ILOs UN Development Assistance Plan Coordinator. Convention No. 189, she says, defines domestic work to mean work performed in a household within an employment relationship.

This means that all household chores, such as "cooking, cleaning the house, washing and ironing, general housework, looking after children, the elderly, or persons with disabilities, as well as maintaining the garden, guarding the house premises and driving the family car" constitute domestic work. One of the categories of workers in Tanzania and Zanzibar who are excluded from the ambit of domestic workers embraces workers who perform household duties at the unoccupied premises of their purported employer.

These workers do cleaning the house, gardening, and at times they act as watchmen for the said premises. Domestic workers like Jane Joseph and particularly for those who live-in, form the majority of domestic workers in Tanzania, are at work for 24 hours, seven days a week. At the time when they are supposedly resting, they are actually on standby and ready to be called any time for work.

"The compounding effect of the above challenges is the fact that there is hardly any inspection in the workplaces of domestic workers irrespective of the fact that Tanzania is a signatory to the ILO Labour Inspection Convention No. 81 of 1947," says Dr Tulia Ackson from the University Of Dar es Salaam School Of Law.

Difficulties of the domestic workers

Further, some domestic workers have been forced to move from one place to the other as their employers are moving or in some cases, domestic workers moving from their initial workplace to a different workplace of a relative of their employers. "Every time the brother of my boss has differences with his wife and she leaves their house, my boss always tells me to go there and prepare food for her brother in the evening after I am through with my daily chores, something which happens frequently," says Anna Johnson, a domestic worker in Kimara Temboni in Dar es Salaam.

She says that on several occasions she has complained to her boss, telling her that the brother usually makes sexual advances on her and at one time he nearly succeeded in raping her. Dr Ackson says that although the Employment and Labour Relations act of 2004 prohibits harassment in workplaces, protection of domestic workers against abuse, harassment and violence would generally be by criminal law.

Some of these workers, for lack of knowledge or alternatives, decide to just ignore such practices and continue working and consider that such acts as part and parcel of their job. Ms Kiaga says that in line with the ILO Convention No. 189, it is suggested that there should be complaints mechanisms for domestic workers' discomforts and that after receiving such complaints there should be thorough investigation and prosecution of offenders.

Working with CHODAWU

Recently, the Deputy Minister for Labour and Employment, Makongoro Mahanga said the government was in the process of forming a low wage board which would be responsible for overseeing, among other things, the employment conditions of domestic workers. He said the board will come up with salary scales for domestic workers and that every employer would have to enter into contract with the workers before commencement of employment.

Apart from supporting the Ministry of Labour, workers and employers associations to familiarize themselves with the Convention 189, ILO Dar es Salaam office has been working with these key partners towards its ratification. Immediately after its adoption, ILO Dar es Salaam worked with CHODAWU, an IDWN affiliate, to familiarize Members of Parliament on the convention, allowing domestic workers themselves to reach out to Parliamentarians.

Since then a tripartite plan of action has been developed in which all key partners have identified the key actions to be taken to improve working conditions of domestic workers in Tanzania. Currently, a situational analysis of domestic workers in Tanzania is ongoing.

The three-pronged approach consists of a gap analysis of national labour laws and the convention 189, a rapid empirical survey of domestic workers and lastly a qualitative research of their working conditions. It is hoped that this situational analysis will provide decision makers with reliable information to support ratification of convention 189.

Photo: CHODAWU/IDWN FLICKR

Source: Anthony Tambwe/AllAfrica

Story Type: Update

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