Ratify ILO convention 189 to protect domestic workers: Parliamentarians

A group of parliamentarians in South Asian countries have urged the governments to ratify ILO convention 189 to protect rights of the domestic workers.
They made the call at the sub-regional parliamentarians’ media consultation in the capital on Wednesday.
The parliamentarians caucus on migration and development – Bangladesh and WARBE Development Foundation, and Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA) jointly organised this.
Bangladesh member of parliament and chair of parliamentarians caucus on migration and development, Israfil Alam read out a statement.
“We, members of parliaments of Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka and civil society members, gathered to reaffirm our commitment to support and ratify the ILO convention 189 on Decent Work for Domestic Workers,” the statement reads.
According to the latest data of International Labour Organisation (ILO), as many as 164 million people are migrant workers and among them, 98 per cent are men and 68 million people are women.
Migrant domestic workers represent 7.7 per cent of the global estimate of migrant workers and around 8.5 million of all migrant domestic workers are women globally.
In 2019, a total of 104,786 women migrated to work as domestic workers.
During the question-answer session, Bangladesh parliamentarian Israfil Alam said it is true a section of female migrants are abused in the destination countries.
He said the migrants go abroad with a certain kind of contract but the contracts are not complied once the migrants arrive at the destination countries.
Israfil said most of the Middle East countries including Saudi Arabia do not abide by international labour law. So it is difficult to protect right of the migrants, he added.
Israfil said the labour sending countries need to come together and raise common voice to ensure rights of the migrant workers.
Bangladesh is yet to ratify the ILO convention on domestic migrants.
Sri Lankan member of parliament Kasadoruge Sujith Perera said that his government is working to ratify ILO convention 189.