Local governments enact measures to protect rights of domestic helpers
By Rebelander S. Basilan
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
CONCORDIO Tapinit was 15 years old when he went to Lapu-Lapu City to work as a domestic helper for a childless couple.
Eldest in a brood of eight, he took on the role of a family breadwinner after his father was sent to jail for sexually molesting his sisters.
As a domestic helper, he cooked, cleaned the house, washed his employers’ clothes, and all other household chores. He also did most of the work in his employer’s canteen, where he also slept, with a table for his bed.
He also endured being his male employer’s punching bag. Every time his employer, a security guard in his 30s, came home drunk, which he did most nights, Tapinit had no choice but take his punches.
“Dili gyud ko musukol ug amo bisag unsaon (I’ll never fight with an employer, no matter what),” he said.
As a working student, he fainted in school three times because of hunger. His employers, he said, allowed him to eat only once or twice a day.
Market
One day, he accompanied the couple to the Carbon Public Market. On their way to the market, riding their multicab, his male employer told him he would shoot him and throw his body into the river. After that, he never went with them to the market again.
Tapinit, now 21, endured such deplorable living and working conditions for one year and two months because he needed the work.
But one Sunday afternoon in 2007, his employer came home drunk after watching a Manny Pacquiao fight on television and barged into the stockroom where Tapinit, suffering from high fever, was curled up on a wooden bench.
His employer was brandishing a gun, whose caliber Tapinit could not tell. He showed Tapinit six bullets, explaining to him how one differs from the other.
One was a poison bullet, two were “double action” and the rest were “single action,” Tapinit recalled being told.
Friend
One by one, his employer loaded the bullets into his gun. Then he aimed the gun at him. “Kung mubuto ni, patay ka. Kung dili, hayahay ka (If this gun fires, you’re dead. If not, you’re lucky),” his employer said.
The gun didn’t fire.
Hardly able to walk, Tapinit left his employers and went to a friend, a 36-year-old classmate at the Bangkal National High School. His friend, noticing that he was ill, fed him and gave him medicines.
His friend, whom he called Luis, worked in a fiber cast company in Lapu-Lapu City and helped him get a job in the company.
Tapinit, who hails from Carcar City, is now a staunch advocate of the rights of domestic helpers. In 2006, he shared his experience at a public hearing on an ordinance seeking to protect the rights of domestic helpers in Lapu-Lapu City. The following year, the ordinance was passed.
The passage of the Kasambahay (domestic helper) ordinance in Lapu-Lapu helped in the prevention and monitoring of abuses against domestic helpers in the city, said Jenneth Aquino, a social worker affiliated with the Visayan Forum Foundation Inc., a non-government organization that advances the rights of domestic helpers in the country.
Lobby
Last month, the Cebu City Council passed a similar ordinance, which various groups—led by the Visayan Forum Foundation—had lobbied for two years.
Sponsored by Councilor Lea Ouano-Japson, the Cebu City Kasambahay Ordinance provides penalties against employers who inflict physical, psychological and economic violence on their helpers.
Physical violence includes slapping, pulling of hair, and hitting the helper with a deadly weapon or any object.
Verbal abuse, name-calling and derogatory remarks, sexual advances and locking helpers inside the house are considered psychological violence, while economic violence includes withholding of salary and salary deduction without basis.
The ordinance also mandates the registration of household helpers in barangays and the creation of a Kasambahay Desk, which will provide assistance to domestic helpers who are victims of abuse.
Aquino said civil society groups will also lobby for the passage of the same ordinance at the provincial level.
With Central Visayas having the third highest number of live-in domestic helpers in the country, such a move is important.
According to the Labor Force Survey conducted by the National Statistics Office last year, 61,000 persons worked as domestic helpers in the region.
The need to protect the rights of domestic helpers has been recognized by the international community. On June 16, 2011, the International Labor Organization adopted the Domestic Workers Convention, which lays down the basic rights and principles concerning domestic workers.
Under the convention, a domestic worker is “any person engaged in domestic work within an employment relationship.” It requires countries to adopt measures that protect domestic helpers from abuses.
In the Philippines, some groups have been lobbying for the passage of a national law protecting the rights of domestic helpers. One of these groups is the Samahan at Ugnayan ng mga Manggagawang Pantahanan sa Pilipinas (Sumapi), of which Tapinit is a member.
In 2008, Tapinit helped in the rescue of a domestic helper who suffered physical violence at the hands of her employer in Bangkal, Lapu-Lapu City.
“He is a very active member of Sumapi,” Aquino said of Tapinit. “I can see his dedication to the cause.”
Tapinit now works as an assistant to the night principal of the Bangkal National High School, where he graduated last year. After graduation, he enrolled in a course on welding and got his certificate last November.
Tapinit appealed to domestic helpers to speak out against the abuses their employers commit against them. He also appealed to employers to respect their helpers, who keep things in their house in order, while they are out and working.
Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on January 11, 2012.
http://www.sunstar.com.ph/cebu/local-news/2012/01/11/local-governments-enact-measures-protect-rights-domestic-helpers-199919
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