The Irregularities of the Housemaid Business

In the last few months, my mother has changed housemaids about 6 times. Almost each one of them gave a 'My mother is sick/has died' explanation for leaving. I thought it was very weird; and then recently, I got a clearer picture of the entire process.

This housemaid business is human/child trafficking, plain and simple.

From what I understand, there are 'agents' who bring the children from their villages to the urban cities where they'll find work; for example, the one in our house right now came from Benue state. The agent may bring in about 10 people at the same time, and for each person, he/she collects about N8, 000.00 as transportation money. I wouldn't feel too bad if that was all the agent made away with.

The agent then stipulates that he/she collects all the money that the maid makes every month. That's not all - after about two or three months when they've made about N29, 000.00 on each child, the agent coaches the help/maid to tell his/her madam about the ailing or dead mother, so he/she can leave. Then, they start the process again with another unsuspecting madam.

This is pure exploitation, especially for the maid involved. The poor child who is in all this, probably makes less that N5, 000.00 for all the trouble. How unstabling it is to try to get used to so many different households in just one year!

Let me tell you a short story. We had a girl who was with us for about two years (this was a very long time ago; no one has stayed longer than six months of late). After a few months, my parents started sending her to school. She could speak maybe two words of English when she arrived; she was reading and writing when she left. She grew to trust out family, and explained the situation with her agent - he wouldn't give her any of the money she made. So, my mum stopped giving her income to the agent. You know what happened? He came in one day and took her away forcefully. Want to know what she was doing the last time we checked? - Prostitution.

I'm writing this to alert everyone of the scheming ways of most of these people who provide maids for us. I don't think there's anything wrong with having a maid. Not all families have stay home mums these days; it's good to have some help as long as your treating them right (but the maid shouldn't become a child's mother if you know what I mean). Plus, giving job opportunities to people who would not be considered in corporate Nigeria is a great thing.

I don't know exactly what can be done to help the maids - Open bank accounts for them to save their income? Say no to the agent who wants to collect their money every month? Report them to the authorities?

Maybe someone reading this has an idea. Please share.