The importance of upskilling domestic workers is seen as a priority to ANC candidate councillor for Ward 94, Refilwe Nsibande.
“Last week, Ward 94 initiated a domestic upskilling workshop with help from Zone 14, which aimed to teach domestic workers to know their rights and empower them, not only as domestic workers but as people of the community as well,” Nsibande said.
She added that domestic workers were empowered by receiving cooking and cleaning courses, and computer and driving lessons. “The reason we are doing these quarterly workshops is to help upskill the workers, as some of them are young enough to be going to school and can still get a chance to get a better job,” Nsibande expressed.
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“We are trying to give them exposure to become something better than domestic help, as they are earning very little money and with the skills they learn, they might get a better chance at a better job.”
Nsibande explained that the workshop was put into place to help make the domestic workers become more professional by knowing their rights and what is expected of them by their employer.
“We had people from the Department of Labour, CCMA and the UIF addressing the workers about how to act professionally, to know which avenues to use if dismissed unfairly, and how important is was to [exercise] their rights,” she said.
“When it comes to labour laws they need to know how many hours is expected of them a day. They also need to know their rates per hour as it will contribute to how much they need to make a day as a domestic worker.”
The ward councillor candidate added that they were in talks with various banks to find the workers the best solution for financial planning, as most of them retire with not much saved up. “The reason behind my passion for upskilling domestic workers comes after a story of a domestic worker who was working for her employer for 20 years, when she got sick and was in need of medical assistance, her employer just [put her on] a taxi back to KwaZulu-Natal.
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“The domestic worker got extremely sick during her trip home and the taxi driver… got scared that the woman might die in his taxi [and] resorted to leaving her on the street. The woman was later helped by a driver after many people passed her… but unfortunately [she] died when she was in hospital.
“With this story, I felt that I need to teach domestic workers their rights so that such situations do not happen again.
“Gardeners are also included in the workshops to help upskill them.”
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