Government is next month expected to present its position on the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 189 and its accompanying Recommendation 201, the first international standards on decent work for domestic workers.<\/p>\n
Minister of Labour, Sports and Manpower Development, Henry Mussa, has confirmed that he will travel to the ILO headquarters in Geneva in April where discussions on ratifying the Convention are expected to take centre stage.<\/p>\n
Mussa said Malawi has delayed to ratify the Convention because due diligence had to be done before the country could put pen to paper.<\/p>\n
It has been over five years since the ILO instituted and adopted Convention 189 which represents a key milestone on the path to the realisation of decent work for domestic workers.<\/p>\n
While domestic workers comprise a significant part of the global workforce in informal employment, they are also among the most vulnerable groups of workers.<\/p>\n
Most work for private households but often without clear terms of employment, are unregistered in any book, and excluded from the scope of labour legislation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are keen to ratify the Convention but there are processes that must be followed. Different departments are supposed to go through the draft and give us their recommendations but I can confirm to you that on my next trip to Geneva, ratifying this Convention will be among the issues we will discuss,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
According to the ILO, over 70 countries have taken action to ensure decent work for domestic workers. Of these, 22 have ratified the Convention, another 30 have achieved law and policy reform with another 18 engaged in extending protection to domestic workers.<\/p>\n
But the ILO says while these measures represent the first steps on a long path to redress a history of exclusion, they are not enough to meet the challenge of protecting domestic workers.<\/p>\n
In an earlier interview, Legal Practitioner, Allan Hans Muhome, said domestic workers in Malawi are at an even higher risk of abuse because of the existent glitches in Malawi\u2019s labour laws which make it easier for employers to offer below standard working conditions for domestic work.<\/p>\n
Muhome said conditions of service for domestic workers in the country remain largely vague and keep changing thereby compromising their constitutional right to fair and safe labour practices.<\/p>\n
He said even though domestic workers are adequately protected by the law in terms of hours of work and other work amenities, employers often breach the provisions with impunity.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is glaring lack of enforcement of the law to favour all employees and, in particular, domestic workers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Muhome said in terms of social security in the form of pension, the law has exempted employers from registering their domestic workers under pension funds.<\/p>\n
\u201cMuchas enforcement and implementation of this would pose challenges, the law, in my opinion, should have created a safety net in the form of say unemployment grants to domestic workers who, for one reason or another, lose their employment,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
In 2010, the ILO estimated that only 10 percent of domestic workers were covered by labour legislation to the same extent as other workers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Government is next month expected to present its position on the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 189 and its accompanying Recommendation 201, the first international standards on decent work for domestic workers. Minister of Labour, Sports and Manpower Development, Henry Mussa, has confirmed that he will travel to the ILO headquarters in Geneva in April […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":43432,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43431"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43433,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43431\/revisions\/43433"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}