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Amarjot Kaur
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, February 17
A Panjab University research on the socio-economic condition of female domestic workers in Mohali’s Mandanpur, Bassi Colony and Sector 54 by a second-year student of MA (Hons) Anahat Sandhu of the university’s Economics Department showed that 95 per cent of the respondents did not have a BPL card. Many respondents shared their failure of getting the BPL card made.
They said the authorities in Mohali tell them that their BPL card cannot be made here. It will be made at their native village, but their home village authorities say that they cannot get a BPL card as they no longer live in the villages. Some of the respondents had a BPL card way before but it had been cancelled for the same reason.
The sample size chosen for the study was of 60 respondents, out of which 77 per cent belonged to the Scheduled Caste, Balmiki, and 50 per cent of the maids were illiterate, while 21.7 per cent had completed their primary education. Only 10 per cent of them had done matric and 1.7 per cent had completed their education till Class 12.
Only 13% of the maids had access to newspapers, while 91.7 per cent had television at their home.
While there are no reliable statistics to determine the number of workers in the sector, the data analysis of the NSSO (61st Round, 2004-05) revealed that there are approximately 4.2 million domestic workers in the country.
The ILO (2015) estimated 67 million people employed as domestic workers globally - about 80 per cent of which were women. The ILO Global Estimates on Migrant Workers (2015) reported more than 150 million workers worldwide are international migrants (accounting for 72 per cent of the total international population of working age migrants).
According to Anahat’s findings, 94 per cent of the migrants are interstate migrants, whereas only 6 per cent have migrated within Punjab. The highest number of migrants was from Uttar Pradesh, especially Kanpur, followed by Bihar, Uttarakhand, while the interstate migrants were from Khanna, Punjab.
As many as 54 per cent of the respondents lived in slum areas and 75 per cent of them used community toilets. Only 25 had toilets inside their homes.
The respondents were asked that if they have a bank account, whether it is opened under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY). It was found that only 46 per cent of the respondents had opened their accounts under the PMJDY while 58 per cent were not even aware of the scheme. As many as 61 per cent of female domestic workers did not even have access to debit cards. Nearly 58 per cent of the maids had faced domestic violence and 43 per cent of the respondents faced separation of utensils even though Article 17 of the Constitution prohibits untouchability and makes it a punishable offence. Separation of utensils comes under the act of untouchability.
Views of maids on demonetisation
Demonetisation is popular among maids as ‘note bandi’. One of the respondents aged 30 took loan during the time of demonetisation for her husband’s operation. Hence she faced a lot of difficulty. Another respondent aged 38 said till date she has 2 old notes of Rs 500 denomination because of her inability to go to her village where the money was kept. Some of the respondents had to wait in long queues to get the old notes exchanged and some did not know the method of getting the notes exchanged, hence they lost their savings.
A few days after demonetisation, many respondents had difficulty in buying commodities for everyday purpose as no change was available for the newly introduced Rs 2,000 note.
FACT FILE
According to Anahat’s findings, 94 per cent of the migrants are interstate migrants, whereas only 6 per cent have migrated within Punjab. The highest number of migrants was from Uttar Pradesh, especially Kanpur, followed by Bihar and Uttarakhand, while the interstate migrants were from Khanna, Punjab.