NEW DELHI: Nearly 60 per cent of people favour better pay and lifestyle rules for domestic workers, a survey conducted by online community portal Local Circles has revealed. In the survey, undertaken by the platform after the labour ministry released a draft policy for domestic workers, 59 per cent of the respondents said that they wanted domestic workers to be paid salaries between 9,000 and 12,000 Rs, while 21 per cent said Rs15,000 was the appropriate wage for domestic workers.
More than 20,000 respondents from 220 districts across the country took part in the survey. Around 70 per cent of the respondents were male, the remaining being female. India boasts of a domestic worker force of around 5 million. Half of these are women.
“It is heartening to see that most people in the country want better lives for domestic workers. We have been working towards this for a long time and it gives me and the organisation immense pleasure to see that our efforts are bearing fruit. I thank the government for coming up with a proposal like this,” Amala Valamarthi of the National Domestic Workers’ Movement, an NGO fighting for domestic workers’ rights, said.
Eighty-two per cent of the respondents said placement/recruitment agencies must be registered with the government through the labour ministry, while 14 per cent disagreed.