The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, –NAPTIP, has issued a stern warning to Nigerians against the use of underage housemaids.
The agency’s Director of Legal and Prosecution, Hassan Tahir, who issued the warning while speaking with newsmen on Monday in Abuja, had said that such practice was an offense before the law.
He had given the advice on the backdrop of domestic worker employers often having challenges with their employees, to the point of inflicting serious injuries on their person.
According to Tahir, Section 23 of the Trafficking in Persons Act, TIP, condemns the employment of a child as a domestic worker (a.k.a Child Labour), saying such is an offense before the law.
Tahir quoted Section 23 of the TIP Act as stating:
“Any person who willfully employs, requests, recruits, transports, harbours, receives or hires out a child as a domestic worker commits an offence and is culpable to conviction of imprisonment for a minimum term of 6 months, and a maximum term not exceeding 7 years”.
Tahir had further advised that if anyone was willing to have a house help, they had ti ensure that such a person was treated fairly.
The director remarked that the house help had to sleep in the same room and attend the same school as the kids of the master as well as eat the same food, wear the same clothes and basically be treated equally as the employers child.
No doubt this new statement was issued due to the several brutality seen on social media whereby various degrees of brutality were seen on underaged children who claimed to be living with their madams (employers).
Perhaps, the most famous instance of domestic worker violence was where one lawyer from Anambra inserted a hot object (an iron) into the private part of her female underaged help over the claims of the little girl molesting her baby boy. A man-hunt had been launched to find and apprehend this lady but there have not been any updates on this case.
