Abused Guinea-bissau’s maids seek protection

Arminda Sa was working 15-hour days for half the pay she had been promised when her boss’ brother tried to rape her. Like most domestic workers in the small West African country of Guinea-bissau, she had no contract, and after refusing him she lost the job. It was a situation familiar to most of the women she knew, she said. “In Guinea-bissau it’s like that. If you want to work you have to give in,” said Sa, a 39-year-old single mother. Guinea-bissau, one of Africa’s poorest states, excludes domestic workers from its national labour law, giving them little protection against exploitation and abuse, activists say.

But a handful of lawyers, policemen and volunteers are pushing to secure their rights — a tough task with the government crippled by political crisis and abuse of housekeepers a social norm.

The ministry of public service and labour declined a request for comment.

Survey data shows nine in 10 domestic workers in Guinea-bissau are victims of sexual abuse, with other forms of violence common.

“It’s the culture here,” said policeman Malam Cassama. “We want to turn the page, change the mentality,” he said, sitting in a shabby roadside bar where the National Association for the Protection of Domestic Workers holds its meetings.

Established five years ago by a local activist, the association has no funding or even a computer. But since it started campaigning some employers have begun to pay attention, said Cassama, who volunteers for the organisation.

“Here in Guinea-bissau anyone can have a maid,” said Sene Cassama, head of the association for domestic workers’ protection.

In 2017, the group surveyed over 7,000 household employees — mostly women — in the capital.

It found 89 per cent were victims of sexual abuse, 80 per cent worked more than 14 hours a day and 35 per cent were under the age of 13. Almost none had social security or a contract.

“The chronic instability in recent years has hampered the government to improve the situation of workers in Guineabissau,” said a spokeswoman for UNIOGBIS, the United Nations peacebuilding mission in Guinea-bissau, which has a human rights section. UNIOGBIS said it was monitoring the situation and liaising with the association for domestic workers, but Sene Cassama said he had asked the mission for help and never heard back.